Without
by HardlyFatal
Summary: Book 2 of 4 of Between the Shadow and the Soul. Sequel to The Gift of Death. Haldir gets what's coming to him, but there's always a catch. COMPLETE
1. Author's Note

Without, Author's Note

10/31/03

So. This is my third attempt to post this story on ff.net; at first, it was originally removed because of smut, although it wasn't all that smutty. Then I tried having it be an update page, and that was taken off too. I'm hoping that this time they'll actually not delete it. 

I'm only putting up chapters that contain no smut/sex whatsover, no matter how euphemistic or romance-novelish. Where smutty chapters would be, I've put up author's notes telling you where to get them instead: 

http : / / groups . yahoo . com / groups / cinnamongrrl /

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

In addition, the entire story can be read without interruption there, if you prefer. The uploads are as follows:

1:   full text

2:   a/n telling you to go to the yahoo group and read it there

3:   a/n

4:   full text

5:   a/n

6:   full text

7:   full text

8:   a/n

9:   full text

10: a/n

11 – 14: full text

15: a/n

16: full text

17: full text

18: a/n

19 – 22: full text

23: a/n

24 – 35: full text


	2. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is now officially a sequel to The Gift of Death, starring Haldir and… someone else. Buffy and the rest will their their grand appearances eventually, never fear. For now, there's just lots of Haldir-y goodness.

Many, many thanks to www.kemet.org, from which I got much of the info about Ancient Egypt. Please forgive my irreverence. _Ankh udja seneb_.

Disclaimer: I own nothing but an '89 Cadillac Eldorado with a broken tape deck, and you're welcome to it. Please. It's just taking up room in my driveway.

Without, Part 1

by CinnamonGrrl

You could get anything in New York City.

Anything you wanted, any time of the day or night, and if you were a decent haggler, you might even get it at a reasonable price, too. There were always risks, though—more often than not, what you were getting "fell off the back of a truck" rather than came to you through more reputable channels. But if you want it badly enough, methods don't really matter, do they? 

Not if you want it badly enough.

Some people had the most curious fetishes. Many were of a sexual nature, of course, humanity being the perverse and perverted creature it is. You've only to visit Christopher Street over in the Village to see **that** first-hand. Others were more about wealth, and the power it brings—the possessors of those fetishes spent their time downtown. Yet more were about social image and appearance, and the power brought by them—Uptown and Garment District folk, respectively. 

Then there were the **real** freaks, like Corinne. Her fetish was so weird you could hardly pronounce it. _Yes, you could get anything in the Big Apple, and thank God for it, too,_ she thought as she pushed open the shop door. The tarnished brass bell hanging from a bracket over the filthy glass door clanged in the silence of the establishment, jarring her already-frazzled nerves. 

Blinking at the change from brilliant sunlight outside to dim, dingy, and dusty within, Corinne scanned the store. It seemed to have been there a very long time, with its ancient, scarred flooring and age-blackened wooden counter at the opposite side of the shop. Upon it a primitive-looking cash register squatted beside a mountain of what appeared, at first glance, to be rather priceless medieval illuminations.

Corinne spotted an old leather chair to one side. On it was a box heaped with Etruscan potsherds, and she gingerly placed it on the floor (once she'd located a space free of rusting Crusader swords and hillocks of pilgrimage badges) before perching on the edge of it, eagerly waiting for someone to heed the call of the door-bell and come attend their latest customer. 

Finally someone appeared, his arrival heralded first by his uneven footsteps and second by his grouchy muttering. 

"How in the ruddy HELL am I supposed to get anything DONE when there's always someone BOTHERING me?" The old man's English voice rose and fell in tone and pitch like waves rolling on the ocean, and Corinne leapt to her feet, ignoring her slight lurch of seasickness.

"Hello," she began in what she thought of as her 'professional' voice. "I'm Corinne Williams. Professor Ives from NYU called ahead and told you I would be coming?"

The old man peered suspicious over the wire rims of his spectacles. "Professor IVES, hm?" He turned his back on her and pulled open a card-file drawer behind him, rifling speedily through its contents with a frown of deep concentration (and disgruntlement) until finding what he sought. Holding the card aloft, he read aloud. "The CARTOUCHE of Weshem-IB." Facing her, he peered closely at Corinne. "Are you QUITE sure you're PREPARED to work with a TALISMAN such as this one?"

She wasn't **sure** sure, but she was **mostly** sure, and gave him a confident nod of her head. "I am."

He snorted skeptically, but nonetheless stumped over to the massive apothecary shelving that covered one entire wall. "Do you HAVE the proper INCANTATION?" he called to her over his shoulder while he propped a battered wooden ladder in the proper place and began to climb. 

"Professor Ives says I don't need it," Corinne replied, frowning at his rusty and rather evil-sounding laughter. "I'm not planning on using it, only studying it."

"Ives is a fool," the old man informed her. "If I didn't think so before, I know it now." He began muttering again. "Sending one of his STUDENTS to my shop, and for a thing of such POWER… the man is a DISGRACE… she probably wants it to meet her TRUE LOVE, scandalous, simply SCANDALOUS…"

Corinne felt a righteous anger fill her. "Excuse me," she snapped. "Standing right here, you know. Standing right exactly here, and hearing everything you say." 

The old man located the drawer he wanted and pulled open the little drawer before delving his hand within. His face was supremely disinterested in her tirade as he removed something gleaming, pocketing it somewhere in his baggy brown cardigan before commencing the ponderous descent down the ladder.

Once on the ground again, he pushed the ladder to one side (uncaring when it jostled into a mountain of Peloponnesian spear-heads, causing them to cascade with a crash over the floor) and retreated behind his old cash register. "Then what do you WANT it for?" he asked snidely. "Do you THINK you're the first young WOMAN I've seen in here? They all COME for the same thing."

Corinne frowned in confusion. "They all come here for the Weshem-ib?" She looked at the object in his age-spotted hand; it was a long, flat, slender column of deep, gleaming gold; along with the familiar Egyptian glyphs engraved on it was a prominent, deeply-carved two-headed lion. _Aker_, she thought in recognition. 

He shot her a sour look over his spectacles as he rang up the sale on the cash register. "No, idiot girl. They come for WHATEVER it is they think will COMPLETE them. The Weshem-IB is how they FIND it." He eyed her keenly. "For you, it'll be true LOVE. Mark my words."

Corinne drew herself up haughtily. "I am definitely not here for **that**," she informed him, as if the word tasted bad. "I want the cartouche because I'm a student of socio-anthropology, and my dissertation is on ancient Egyptian mysticism. I'm not going to actually **use** it, just study it. It will be the focal point of my thesis." She finished up this little speech with a proud little nod, satisfied she'd put him in his place. She did so hate to be misunderstood.

He couldn't possibly have been less impressed. "I'll expect it back in my SHOP within a year," he told her calmly, holding up a small, jewel-encrusted dagger, and held out his hand for his payment. Professor Ives had told her about the terms of purchase. Mere money suffice—for an artifact of this age and meaning, nothing short of blood would do. _Let no one say I'm not committed to my studies_, she thought, and placed her own hand in his. 

His skin was dry and papery, like a snake's, and she couldn't repress a shudder at his touch. With practiced and efficient motions he brought the dagger to her wrist. There was a flash like fire streaking across her skin, and then searing agony as the old man nearly severed her hand from her arm. Blood spilled over the cartouche and ran in rivulets over the scarred counter until it began to pool on the floor, and spots began to dance in Corinne's vision. She struggled to free herself, but his grip on her arm was inexorable. She swayed on her feet, and just as she thought she could not stand any longer, he gestured with the dagger a second time.

In an instant, the pain was gone, and she glanced down to see that the gaping wound in her wrist was completely healed, as if it had never been there at all. There was no mark whatsoever. That was amazing in itself, but Corinne didn't have time to goggle over it because the cartouche had begun soaking up her blood. And not just the blood on the counter, either; any that had spilled over the side and onto the floor was now flowing, against the laws of physics and rules of gravity, in an uphill vermilion stream as if magnetized toward the intricately worked piece of gold. 

_I didn't think gold could do that_, she thought dazedly, and wondered if the floor were as comfortable as it looked. She dearly wanted to lay down on it, and rest her hot face against its cool surface. 

Finally, all the blood had been absorbed into the cartouche. There was nothing to indicate that anything unusual had just taken place, except for the faint throbbing in Corinne's brain, a reminder of the pain and blood loss. "Why will you expect it back in a year?" she asked at last, recalling his last comment.

"It always RETURNS after it's been used." He seemed to think of something then, something that greatly cheered him, because he smiled. It was very unnerving. "Of course, those who USE it don't always return, but the CARTOUCHE always does…"

Corinne felt a frisson of unease scamper down her spine. Perhaps she ought to study it more before using it? Yes, that would be best. "I told you already, I'm not going to use it." He was really beginning to get on her nerves, but now she was curious. "How long has it been returning to you?"

He wrapped the cartouche in a length of creamy linen, smirking all the while. The effect was just as unnerving as his smile had been. "About 1300 years now," he informed her, then laughed at her expression. "Idiot girl. Do you honestly THINK that magic is only a superstition, SOMETHING for dried-up scholars to study a few millennia AFTER its heyday?"

That's exactly what Corinne had thought. _This is insane_, she told herself. _There's no way this old guy is **that** old, and there's no way this thing_— she looked down at the brown paper-wrapped packet in her hand— _can magically return_. 

The old man was watching her, great knowledge and understanding in his eyes. "You'll LEARN the truth," he told her, and made a shooing motion with his hands. "You'll see WHAT I mean." And he turned to go back from whence he'd come, muttering once more. "They never listen, the YOUNG people. Always thinking they're right, that they KNOW everything. Well, this one's got quite the surprise in STORE for her, quite a surprise indeed. She'll LEARN, oh yes, she'll learn."

Feeling seasick once more, Corinne clutched her precious bundle tightly and fled back into the bright June sunlight.

_One week later_

Corinne lurched into her tiny dorm room after her night out with the girls. It was an occasional thing they'd done for the past three years, a haphazard socializing since they had no time in their busy lives for the distraction of boyfriends. 

They'd been discussing their various dissertations, totally absorbed with their studies—and then the door of the SoHo tavern had opened, and a couple entered. It was raining outside, and they were breathless from running to escape getting wet. The man held a folded newspaper over the woman's head, and when she turned her laughing face up to his, he leant down to give her a kiss. It was a private moment, an intimate moment, and when she'd seen the woman's lashes flutter closed in pleasure Corinne had felt a pang of… something. A sense of longing.

A low hum caught her attention then, and she glanced down into her pocketbook on the floor to see a strange glow emanating from it. Picking up the bag, she shoved aside her wallet and cosmetics pouch to see the cartouche lying at the bottom of its depths. It was glowing softly with a reddish light, and seemed to be vibrating gently.

_I left this in my dorm_, she thought, confused. But then the fifth round of drinks arrived, with much noisy welcome by her companions, and she gladly raised her drink to her lips as her friends smiled. 

She'd been a little subdued the remainder of the evening, and only too happy to go home. Once inside, however, she remembered the cartouche and rifled through her pocketbook for it. "Where the hell is it?" she grumbled, and losing patience just overturned the bag on her bed. A warm glow beckoned her, and she pushed the usual female detritus out of the way to reveal it in all its ethereal glory.

_Weird_, she thought, and reaching for it. The moment she picked it up, the glow became brighter and brighter until her schnapps-soaked brain protested and she closed her eyes against the fierce glare. Then she felt herself falling, but before she could do anything like flail or scream she'd landed with a thud right on her ass.

***

"In truth, I worry about our brother, Orophin," Rúmil said as he lounged against the base of the mallorn which housed their talan, idly sharpening the blade of one of his daggers. "He is even more out of sorts than usual."

Orophin glanced up from his task of fletching arrows and arched a slender golden brow. "How can you tell?" he asked dryly. 

Rúmil grinned briefly, then sobered. 'He has become even more withdrawn than usual, Oro. When was the last time he actually volunteered to patrol the eastern marches by the Anduin?"

The other elf nodded in comprehension. "Think you it has aught to do with your betrothal?" For Rúmil was newly affianced, just a month now.

"Our brother **Haldir**?" Rúmil snorted skeptically before falling about laughing.

"Is there another that Naneth and Ada failed to tell us about?" Orophin asked mildly. "It is not **that** funny."

"Indeed it is, Oro," Rúmil insisted, gasping. "Stern, dour Haldir pining with jealousy that I have found a lady-love, and he has not?" He wiped a tear of mirth from his eye. "Indeed, the idea is ludicrous."

  
"I could not agree more," said a stern, dour voice from the trees behind them, and Haldir himself stepped from them to survey his younger brothers with a combination of amusement and exasperation. "If I feel aught about your betrothal, Rúmil, it is pity for your future wife, having to endure such a silly creature such as yourself."

Rúmil frowned at Haldir, then frowned at Orophin, who'd begun laughing. " 'M Not a silly creature," he mumbled with a pout. 

"Of course you are, _melui-nîn_," said a feminine voice, and an elleth glided into the clearing, making straight for the youngest elf. She was rather perfectly average for female elf, with the exception of the deep love glowing on her face. As she approached Rúmil, it was as if there were no other living beings on Middle-Earth, save her and him. Tatharë she was called, and had come a year before from Mirkwood as a sort of diplomat between the two elven realms. In spite of her innate seriousness, it had not taken long for Rúmil to fall in love with her. Longer she had needed to return his feelings, but now that she did, there was no doubting her devotion to him. "But that is why I adore you so."

Rúmil brightened and wrapped his arms around her, pressing a kiss to her honey-gold hair. "Then I shall be silly with pride," he announced, and Tatharë bestowed upon him one of her tiny, mysterious smiles before turning to Haldir.

"Glad we are of your safe return," she said by way of welcome. "Will you join us for luncheon?"

Haldir had wanted only to dart to his talan, get a new supply of clean clothing and fresh food and dart back to his post, but seeing the expressions on all their faces he was slightly guilty. They had missed him, his brothers, and as they looked at him expectantly he felt his resolve crumble. "Yes," he found himself saying. "I will join you."

Still, he was relieved when the meal was over and he could snatch up his supplies and leave once more. He had been feeling restless lately, and could scarcely bear to be in Caras Galadhon. It was too enclosed, and there were too many elves about, crowding him. He travelled quickly from the city to his post, reaching it within a single day.

From his watch-flet on the banks of the mighty Anduin, on the easternmost border of the Lórien woods, he could stare across at the plains of Rhovanion and the southwestern tip of Mirkwood, now called East Lórien since the War of the Ring, and part of the realm of Celeborn and Galadriel. If he squinted, he could make out the dark silhouette of Dol Guldor in the distance. He would see these places, and he would feel a craving to explore them. 

Sometimes the impulse became such that only his centuries of discipline and duty kept him at his post. Whence came this restlessness? He did not think, as Orophin did, that it had anything to do with Rúmil finding love. No, Haldir had given up on that possibility. It might be the fate of his youngest brother, and he doubted not that Orophin too would find a mate in his own time, but for himself…

Haldir had long ago resigned himself to a life alone. He was Guardian of Lórien, destined to be its protector to his dying day. He would not be accompanying his people to the Undying Lands, and that meant a definite reduction in the pool of young lovelies willing to bind their lives and souls with him, for none wanted to remain behind when all others had departed.

Legolas had once told him that there were elleths who would be willing to stay here in Arda with him, but… Haldir sighed. He had seen the passion Legolas had with his wife, Haldir's own former lover, Dagnir—the Slayer. Or Buffy, as she was known to her closer friends. He had seen that love, and wanted one like it for his own. He would not settle for just any elleth, who wanted him simply because he was a march-warden, or the Guardian, or Celeborn's lieutenant. 

He wanted an elleth to love him because he was Haldir. 

He leaned his head back against the smooth bark of the mallorn and for a moment remembered Tatharë's face shining up at Rúmil, and felt a pang of—something. Not jealousy, exactly, but something definitely tainted his joy at his brother's good fortune. A sense of longing…

No sooner had he completed the thought then there was a flash of light and a crash of noise. He might have thought he'd been struck by lightning, except it was a particularly fine day with no sign of storm in the clear, cloudless sky. All was as it should be, perfectly normal.

So why was there a human female sitting on the floor of his watch-flet, dressed oddly and staring up at him in unadulterated horror?

_melui-nîn_ = my sweet one


	3. Chapter 2

Without, Author's Note

10/26/03

Without chapter 2 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

 http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	4. Chapter 3

Without, Author's Note

10/26/03

Without chapter 3 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

 http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	5. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Author's Note: Haldir's description of Corinne to Galadriel and Celeborn was inspired by Shakespeare's Sonnet CXXX, inwhich he explains what she is **not**. Text of that sonnet at the end of this chapter, in case you're interested. Technoelfie made fanart for The Gift of Death! If you want to see it, visit my yahoo group, URL is on my author page (click on my name, above). Technoelfie writes faboo fanfic as well as being a talented artist, so please stop by and read her stuff! (just do a search for 'Technoelfie' here on ff.net). 

Without, Part 4

It was almost noon, and they hadn't gotten far at all. Corinne wasn't dressed for trekking through the woods, after all. She'd donned fashionable garments that displayed her charms to their fullest, thinking her longest walk would be from the subway station down the street to the pub, and on perfectly paved sidewalks, no less.

Haldir was beginning to get **very** cross, if the looks he was slanting her way were any indication. 

"I didn't know when I got dressed yesterday that I'd be going on a nature hike, you know," she snapped after the tenth such glare he'd shot in her direction. "This outfit is perfectly acceptable for an evening of boozing downtown. If I'd known I'd end up slogging after the grumpiest elf in the entire universe I'd have dressed like Lara Croft."

Haldir did not know of this Lara Croft, but assumed she was known for her practical attire, and moreover he was completely unperturbed by her insult. "I am _not_ the grumpiest elf in the universe," he informed her calmly. "That honour goes to Erestor. His ill humour puts mine to shame, truly." 

"Then I pity anyone who has to deal with Erestor for any length of time," Corinne muttered, and tripped over a branch. She fell to her hands and knees, pain shooting up her thighs and wrists, and she knew her pants had torn. Standing, she wished with all her might she were back home in her dorm and could have a shower, a change of clothes, perhaps a mocha frappachino… leaning over to investigate her newly skinned knee, she felt an odd humming in her pocket, and stuck her hand in to investigate. 

"Hm," she said as she withdrew the cartouche. "Wonder what's—" But she fell silent when it began to glow brightly. "Uh-oh."

Haldir's eyes grew wide, and he threw up his hands to shield his sensitive elven eyes from the piercing light. "Corinne!" he exclaimed, but there was no answer, for when he lowered his arms again she was gone. There was no point searching for her, but he found his head whipping around, gazing frantically through the trees that sounded him. 

An utterly foreign sense of panic gripped his chest, followed swiftly by a fury of impotence. That cartouche had taken her away as surely as it had brought her to him in the first place, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing. Never had he thought that solitude could bring such pain, but even when he'd been annoyed at her these past few hours for slowing them down in her hideous shoes, he'd felt a completion he'd never even thought to dream of. 

And now that she was gone, his chest felt as if it had been rent wide open, leaving a gaping wound. "Corinne," he whispered, hanging his head.

Haldir allowed himself to mope for a while before straightening once more to his full, proud height. He was a Sindar, a Lórien elf, a march-warden. He had fought in the War of the Ring beside its hero, and was a friend of King Elessar himself. He was the Guardian of the Golden Wood, favoured by the most powerful and learned elves of Arda, and he would not be brought low by a predicament such as this. There must be a way to bring Corinne back.

With this resolution firmly in place in his mind, Haldir turned once more toward Caras Galadhon, able to jog at a quick and steady pace now that he was unencumbered by his little slave to fashion. He had to speak with Galadriel and Celeborn.

***

When Corinne opened her eyes again, it was as she expected: instead of tall, ancient trees and a tall, gorgeous elf, she saw short, ancient cement block walls painted an unsightly mushroom colour. Fake-wood-laminate furniture of the 'industrial college' type known and loathed by college students the world over squatted against various walls in the tiny bedroom. Her computer, which she had once more forgotten to shut down, hummed on the desk, its screensaver displaying the usual flying toasters. 

She should have been happy to be home again, and free of the bizarre incidents of the previous day. Her dorm was perfectly normal, perfectly familiar. There was her massive pile of used-but-still-overpriced textbooks, there was the stack of notebooks in which she scribbled her copious notes in tiny, cramped handwriting. There was her mound of unwashed laundry, which she had vowed to take to the launderette this weekend, no more excuses. 

But there was no Haldir, and so 'happy' was pretty much the last adjective that could be applied to Corinne. Glaring down at the cartouche in her hand, she flung it at the wall with such force that it rebounded with a sharp 'ping' and fell to the floor, out of sight.

What had happened? The last thing she remembered was falling over, and then thinking longingly about showers and Starbucks—mmm, chai—and then the cartouche had started to vibrate. "Oh, crap," she muttered, figuring it out finally. "Stupid tricky thing." She could apparently activate the cartouche simply by wishing for something, and if she touched it whilst it was activated, she would get her wish. "Have to be more careful from now on."

What should she do? She slowly began to strip her ruined clothes off, pondering deeply. Here was her chance to pretend her trip to Lórien had never happened, that she'd never met Haldir. If she wanted, she could simply continue with her life as it had always been. A glance at her computer's clock told her that she'd spent the same amount of time there as had passed here in New York—all she had to do was pretend to anyone who'd tried to contact her in the past day that she'd spent the day dealing with the mother of all hangovers.

But could she do that? Could she forget his kiss, his feel, his taste? Could she forget the experience of sleeping beside him, of waking wrapped in his arms, the warm sunlight dappling them through the leaves? She knew in her heart that it would be impossible. So, then, could she live with the memory, knowing that it could never be repeated? She wadded up her dirty clothes and tossed them into a corner. Just the idea of never touching him again, never feeling the silk of his hair or the satin of his skin against her fingertips made a hollow ache start in her belly. 

Could she love him, already? It didn't seem possible. But then she'd have never thought weird portals would suck her into an alternate dimension, either. Anything could happen, apparently. The only thing that was sure and definite to her was the insistent urge she felt to return to Haldir. It was desire for him, and curiosity about his history and his people, but also an eagerness to see what could happen. She didn't think she would be able to live with herself if she didn't investigate the mystery of the cartouche and why it had brought her to Haldir. She'd regret not following her heart for the rest of her life.

Corinne sighed, padding nude to the bathroom, and knew her decision was made. There was no question she'd go back, but first she had things to take care of. There were arrangements to be made with the university, so no one would think she'd been murdered when she wasn't seen for a few weeks, and she had to pack…

But first, her shower, and then the largest iced cappuccino to be found in the entire Tri-State area.

A few hours later, a freshly-showered and trendily-dressed Corinne sat in the Starbucks on 8th Street, sucking down some frosty caffeine and checking items off a list scratched on the back of an envelope. 

Item #1: her plants. Easy—she'd given them all away, stating she'd developed an allergy. The other grad students on her floor had been only too pleased to accept them. Maybe they'd even let her have them back, if she decided to return someday. She was very fond of her Wandering Jew.

Item #2: her friends and family. They all knew she'd been bucking for an assistantship in Cairo… she would tell them she had a preliminary orientation and would be abroad for a few weeks. Her parents would think she was insane to travel to the Middle East, but they'd always thought her weird to begin with, so it wouldn't be too much of a shock. 

Item #3: her fellow grad students. They'd be trickier… they wouldn't buy some stupid story about Cairo. She'd have to tell them she was returning to Michigan to visit her parents for the remainder of the summer… that was believable. 

Of course, she could just tell everyone the truth… she was leaving for an extended vacation to spend time with a guy she only just met, and oh yeah, he wasn't even human. Corinne snorted into her iced cappuccino. _That would go over well. Not. _

Item #4: what to pack. She figured all her sturdiest clothes and shoes, of course, but she wasn't exactly the outdoorsy type—she'd grown up outside Detroit and lived for the past eight years in Manhattan. The closest things she had to 'sturdy clothes and shoes' were her work-out gear and aerobics sneakers she used for the Tai-Bo classes she's signed up for but never managed to attend. _They'd just have to do_, she guessed with a shrug. 

And perhaps she should bring her nice outfits, too. It wouldn't do for Haldir to think she only ever looked utilitarian. She had a great outfit she'd worn last year to the opera—**Rigoletto** at the Met, a wonderful night—and thought the black sheath with roses of gold and crimson beads would knock him on his fine elven butt. At least one bathing suit, and a few sweaters, in case it was cold at night… _Oh, hell_, she thought, pulling idly on her drink. _Might as well just bring everything._ And then she brightened. That was a **great** idea. That way, she wouldn't have to worry about leaving something behind that she'd end up needing desperately.

Item #5: study tools. She fully intended to learn as much about elves as was humanly possible to cram into both her head and the newly-purchased notebooks which rested in a shopping bag at her feet. With them were two boxes of cheap pens in various colours, all the better to organize her notes. 

A gurgling noise alerted Corinne to the fact that she'd sucked her cup dry. Standing, she stuffed the list into her pocketbook, grabbed her notebooks and pens, and strode out of the coffee shop to meet her destiny.

***

Haldir pushed himself hard, and in spite of his slow start with Corinne from the eastern marches, made it to Caras Galadhon in the normal amount of time. He ignored the glances he received from his fellow Galadhrim, surprised to see the Guardian so soon after departing for his post, and made directly for the talan of Celeborn and Galadriel.

"Mae govannan," the Golden Lady said, answering his summons, her leisurely stroll in direct counterpoint to his brusque banging upon her door. Holding it open, she stepped back and bade him enter. "What can have our severe march-warden returning so early from the Great River?"

He shot her an amused look. "As if you are not already perfectly aware," he muttered. "There has not been a secret kept from you in this wood for an age."

"Longer than that, I would reckon," said another voice from the room beyond, and Celeborn entered. "I have known Galadriel for over five thousand years, and never have I known her to be even mildly bemused by anything." He shook his silvery head. "It is most disconcerting."

Galadriel gifted her husband with a sweet smile that promised he would be very sorry later for his teasing—much to his delight—and motioned for Haldir to seat himself before taking up a slender ewer of wine and pouring three goblets-full. He sipped at the wine. As usual, it was exquisite.

"One of Thranduil's?" he inquired of Celeborn, who was known for his expertise and knowledge of the best vintages. The Silver Lord nodded with a small smile, pleased his friend could recognize the wine's origin. The three drank in silence a few moments, and Haldir felt some of the tension he'd harboured since Corinne's disappearance melt away. 

It was late afternoon in Lórien, and the fading sunlight fell golden and warm to dapple over them and dance in patterns over the floor of the elegant talan. The air was sweet and fresh, pleasantly moist, and scented with the perfume of the earth and tree-blossoms. Haldir drank the finest wine in Arda, and sat with his closest friends. It was serene, refreshing, and perfect. Haldir was miserable. "How much do you know of what has happened?" he asked at last.

"Only that you have spent the past day not guarding our borders, but dealing with an unexpected visitor," Galadriel replied with a smile. "So, _mellon_, tell us more about her."

"She is not beautiful," he said plainly. "She is not tall, nor elegant. Her eyes are not like stars, and her hair is not raven, and not gold. There are no bells in her laugh, and she has not the wisdom of the Eldar." Haldir sighed heavily. "But she is bright and eager to learn, and quick to laugh. She is a scholar, devoting her life to knowledge." There was a note of pride in his voice that the others did not miss. "And how she looks at me…" His words trailed off as he stared at the wall, remembering how her eyes would glow with some unnamable emotion. 

"How does she look at you?" Celeborn prompted gently.

Haldir dragged his attention back to them. "With love," he whispered. "She does not realize it yet, I think. But she looks at me with love."

Galadriel and Celeborn glanced at each other. Ever had it been with some of their kind; only a few moments were needed to see the beauty of another's fëa, and come to cherish it. "She is mortal, is she not, Haldir?" Galadriel asked. "This worries us."

"And me," he conceded. "There is much that is unknown about how she came to be here, for she is not of Arda, nor even of Valinor." He allowed a tiny smile. "In truth, I am not sure where she hails from. The institution of learning she attends is called Enwieyue, I believe." He heaved a sigh. "And it would seem she has returned there, for we were on our way here to consult with you when she disappeared as suddenly as she came to me yesterday."

"How is it she came to simply appear?" Celeborn wanted to know, his fair brow creased in confusion.

"She has a talisman of great power," Haldir explained. "It is from an ancient culture in her lands, many thousands of years old. It gives one his heart's greatest wish."

"Her greatest wish was you?" Galadriel teased, smiling when her stern march-warden actually blushed a little and refused to meet her eyes. 

"It was true love," he muttered, embarrassed. "And… that also was my wish. I believe we were brought together because our desires were the same."

"Then how is it that she is gone now?" Celeborn seemed to be stuck on the matter of traveling in such a manner, and had obviously set his prodigious brain to exploring the matter. 

"She was not dressed appropriately for a trek through the woods, no, not at all. She has these unspeakably ugly shoes, and kept tripping…" Now Haldir was smiling. "We were arguing, and she fell. When she stood, the… cartouche, I believe she called it, began to glow, so brightly I could not watch without pain. When I could see again, she was gone. And I resumed my journey here."

Haldir stared down at the table, peering at the half-full goblet in his hand. "What if she does not return?" He asked more to himself than to them, feeling despair creep into him, and clenched his fist around the goblet's delicately wrought stem. 

"Have you joined with her?" Galadriel asked with diplomatic care.

"No," he replied shortly. "I did not think it wise, though it pained us much to refrain. But, no." 

"That is, perhaps, for the best," she said, placing her hand on his forearm. "For whatever pain you feel now would be a thousandfold worse if you had, _mellon-nîn_."

"I know this." He tried to push down the anguish that was rising within him. 

"I will meditate and see if there is aught I can learn of this," Galadriel said after a few tense moments of silence. "For the Valar have not told me of aught concerning it."

"And I will study the scrolls," Celeborn offered. "There may be some hint of a remedy to this situation."

"I thank you both," Haldir said, rising and bowing formally, then following them out of the talan. 

"The day is bright," commented Galadriel as they made their way down the steps encircling the thick mallorn trunk. 

"And growing brighter," Celeborn added, squinting a little. Indeed, the sunlight shone fiercely this late spring day, and the small courtyard at the entrance to their talan was light up with a piercing, reddish glow. As they descended, it seemed to coalesce at a particular spot in the centre of the courtyard and Haldir caught his breath.

"She returns!" he murmured, and leapt lightly from the stairs to the ground below as elation replaced the sadness that had grown within his chest. He tried mightily not to look away, so he could see the moment she came back to him, but the light was too bright and pained him. 

When he opened his eyes again, it was to see her standing before him, her face both scared and hopeful. Did she doubt his joy to see her again? He felt almost insulted for a moment before remembering his own doubt she would return. Whatever was happening between them, it was still too new for them to have complete trust and faith in each other yet. They were still unsure, and indeed neither had ever uttered words of love or commitment to the other.

"_Doll-nîn_," he murmured, and strode across the courtyard to her. Relief washed over her, and she visibly relaxed her stiff posture, taking a few hesitant steps in his direction.

"Haldir!" exclaimed the voice he had feared never to hear again, and even knowing he was making a spectacle of himself before his lord and lady, and all the rest of Caras Galadhon, he wrapped his arms around her tightly and buried his face in her hair to hide the fact that he was smiling foolishly. 

_doll-nîn_ = my dusky one

Sonnet CXXX, by William Shakespeare 

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;  
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:  
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;  
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.  
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,  
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;  
And in some perfumes is there more delight  
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.  
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know  
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:  
I grant I never saw a goddess go,   
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:  
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,  
As any she belied with false compare.


	6. Chapter 5

Without, Author's Note

10/26/03

Without chapter 5 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

 http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	7. Chapter 6

Without, Part 6

The next morning Corinne awoke feeling wonderful except for a slight soreness in her belly, and a fierce desire to start learning everything she could about this strange new world. She was a little alarmed at the former until she realized it was the same ache she'd felt after wishing herself back in New York. Chalking it up to simply being away from Haldir, she dressed (someone had brought her immense duffelbag to the talan and left it inside the door) in an outfit vastly more conservative than yesterday's, or so she thought: jeans and a crisp white shirt. Bundling her hair on her head in a messy bun, applying the barest trace of cosmetics, and sticking her glasses on her nose, she grabbed up a notebook and a fistful of pens before exiting Haldir's home.

Once outside, she remembered she had no idea whatsoever where to find Galadriel and Celeborn, and when she asked a passing elf he only stared in confusion. _Must not speak English_, she guessed, and frowned.

"Are you looking for the Lady?" asked a soft voice behind her, and Corinne whipped around to find a beautiful elleth standing there, smiling. "I am Tatharë, Rúmil's betrothed."

"Hi, Tatharë," Corinne replied, holding out her hand to shake. Tatharë put her left into it, instead of grasping it with the right, and they ended up holding hands awkwardly until Corinne disengaged them gently. _Gotta remember they don't do that_, she scolded herself. "I was looking for Celeborn, actually.

"I will show you," replied Tatharë, and led the way through the labyrinthine pathways between the trees. 

"Do you know where Haldir might be?" Corinne asked, eyes wide as she gazed around the elven city.

Tatharë smiled. "It is my understanding that he was… out of sorts this morn, and has ordered the wardens under his command to a double session of training on the archery field." She glanced at her companion, brows lifted delicately in inquiry. Corinne had a good idea exactly **why** Haldir might be grumpy, but didn't think she should explain it, and just smiled back. 

"It is here," Tatharë said at last, gesturing at an immense tree, and Corinne thanked her before starting up the winding stairs to the first level of the abode. She knocked, but there was no answer. "Celeborn?" she called into the room, poking her head through the door, only too late recognizing the sounds from the next room for what they were. "Oh, hell." 

There was a muffled exclamation, then the rustling of fabric, and Galadriel emerged from the other room to practically skip toward the door. She patted her hair back into order as she tugged her floaty dress back on. "No, no," she assured Corinne when the woman turned and made to bolt away, "do not worry, you interrupted nothing."

"Nothing?" Celeborn mock-growled as he followed his wife, his silvery hair distinctly mussed and his elegant robes all askew. "You were not calling it 'nothing' a moment ago…" He fell silent at an arch look from Galadriel, and turned to Corinne. "You wished to see me?"

"Um, yes," she replied, feeling like a complete idiot. "I was wondering if you wanted to teach me about elven culture, if we could arrange for lessons."

"Lessons?" Celeborn looked as if all his birthdays had come at once, and Galadriel groaned.

"You know not what you ask," the elf-witch told their guest warningly.

Corinne blasted her biggest, most ingratiating smile at Celeborn, who seemed somewhat taken aback by the force of it. "I'd like to start with a socio-historical summary, combined with learning your language, if that's all right with you," she said. "The history will have to be all verbal at first, until I can read your writing enough to study from books." She looked worried for a moment. "You do have books, don't you? Yours isn't an oral tradition, is it?"

"I have books," Celeborn assured her gravely. "Many, many books. May I show them to you?"

Corinne sucked in a breath. "Please," she whispered, taking the arm he held out to her and allowing him to lead her toward his library.

That left Galadriel alone in the vestibule. "Ought I to be worried about the two of them?" she asked herself dryly before her smile faded. She was aware of how close the girl and Haldir had come last night to joining, and though she could not discern what exactly the danger was, one thing was clear: that talisman was pushing them to behave in ways unlike their true natures, and seemed unduly influential in getting them to consummate their relationship. Therefore, that very thing must be avoided.

Glancing in a mirror to make sure she didn't look too disheveled—it wouldn't do for the Golden Lady to appear in public like she'd just been tumbled, no matter how true it was—she made her way down to her private glade. She allowed her mind to clear and focused on reaching out to a particular person, though she was hundreds of miles away. The familiar feel of the woman's conscious was like a warm hug, and Galadriel couldn't help but smile. How she missed her dear friend! "Buffy," she called out mentally, "Attend me."

There was a moment of disorientation—Buffy had never quite gotten accustomed to telepathic communication—before happiness and warmth flowed back along the link toward Galadriel. 

"Hi!" she chirped into Galadriel's head. "How's everything going? Just wanting to complain about Celeborn again? What'd he do this time?"

Galadriel laughed; she couldn't help it. "Celeborn has been behaving himself quite nicely," she informed Buffy. "It is Haldir who is causing trouble this time."

She could feel Buffy's skepticism. "Haldir? No way. I can't believe he's being naughty." Pause. "Ok, scrap that. I **can** imagine him being naughty. What's he up to?"

Galadriel felt it easier to just communicate her memories and knowledge of the situation with Corinne rather than explain them. When she was done, Buffy was silent a long moment. Then, "It'll take us a week to get to Lórien. We'll leave tomorrow."

"That is not necessary—" Galadriel demurred, not wanting to subject Buffy and her husband to a lengthy trip, but was interrupted. 

"Sounds to me like you've got someone—from my world, no less—who's been dropped through a portal into Arda. Who better to deal with the issue, than someone who's both been there and done that? Besides," Buffy continued. "Been getting kinda antsy around here, totally wouldn't mind a road trip. We haven't been out of Ithilien since Dawn had the baby, and I'm so bored I might have to start reading or some other equally dire hobby."

"Dire indeed," Galadriel said with a laugh. "We cannot allow such a fate to befall you, Buffy, so I will see you in a sen'night's time." 

***

There were many things that Corinne was confused about in her life. Foremost of them, of course, was the matter of Haldir; more secondary was her presence in Arda at all. Magic simply wasn't supposed to **be**. She was an academic; she and her colleagues dealt with facts, dry and empirical. How was she supposed to explain this to her faculty advisor? 

"Sorry I didn't hand in that status essay on my thesis, Professor Ives, but you know that gold thingy you had me get from the creepy guy? Made me bleed like a stuck pig to pay for it? Well, seems that it sent me to an alternate dimension, and I fell in love with an elf. Yeah, an elf. Yes, he lives in a tree. No, he doesn't bake cookies."

There were also the less pressing issues of her dissertation, finding the money for tuition and books and room and board, and the all-important purchase of designer originals at discount prices. Dealing with her parents figured somewhere in there too. So, there was lots of weirdness and puzzlement floating around Corinne's head.

But there was one thing in her life that shone with the perfect clarity of crystal: she positively **adored** Celeborn.

The elf was an absolute **demon** when it came to knowledge—both the acquisition and dissemination of it. He was clearly thrilled to have an audience eager to soak up what he knew, and even more delighted than **that**, if possible, to hear about her world. He peppered her with questions as often as she did him, and never showed irritation when she interrupted him to explain a point, or go further into an issue.

And it wasn't just historical facts that he was so enthusiastic about, either—he segued more often than not into the philosophy of life, love, war, peace, death, sex, and anything else they could think of. He had an excellent, wry sense of humour that made her run the gamut between a mere twitch of the lips to uproarious laughter.

They were up all night. 

Galadriel came to the library at one point, scolding them in her serene way to keep their voices down. They invited her to join them, but she just rolled her eyes and left them to it. Haldir stomped in an hour before dawn, fuming that Corinne had deserted him, but they just blinked owlishly at him, and he had thrown up his hands in exasperation and stomped right back out again.

It was well into the morning when they finally admitted their exhaustion, and Celeborn showed her to the door. "I will expect you this afternoon for your first language lesson?" he asked, and she nodded blearily. 

"After I sleep for at least a few hours," she promised, and left. It wasn't long, however, before she realized she had no idea where she was going. Haldir had been pretty pissed off that last time she'd seen him; would he let her crash at his place?

Tatharë appeared once more, and guided her back to Haldir's talan. He was sitting at a table with his brothers, eating a meal, and Corinne considered delaying her sleep for some food but the thought of that heavenly bed decided for her. "Hi, sweetie," she murmured and brushed a kiss over Haldir's forehead, completely oblivious to the glare he was leveling at her with the force of a forest fire. Her head was still whirling over the concept that people who'd made ancient history thousands of years ago were still alive. _Gotta meet Glorfindel_, she thought. _Gotta learn more about that Balrog-thingy. Gotta—_

"Huh?" she said eloquently, stopping in her tracks when Haldir stood and folded his arms over his chest. "What?"

"This is unacceptable," he told her, his voice low and rumbly. "You cannot spend all night with Celeborn and then stumble in at breakfast."

Corinne peered up at him. Even angry, he looked delicious. "Ok," she agreed, sliding her arms around his waist and dropping her head to his chest, nuzzling her face against him. "Can I go to sleep now?" The gusty sigh he heaved made loose tendrils of her hair blow crazily around her face. Taking her shoulders, he put her away from him, turned her around, and steered her toward the bedroom. She was vaguely aware of the expressions of shock on the faces of his brothers and Tatharë, and wondered why—hadn't they ever seen a sleepy person before?

"We must talk."

_Crap_, she thought. _That sounded serious_. And she was so tired, and had to return for Sindarin lessons in just a few hours… "Can't it wait until tonight?" she asked, wincing at the whine in her voice. 

Shutting the door behind them, he turned to stare at her. "I fear not." In the brilliant sunlight flooding the room, he looked sinfully beautiful, and memories of his body against hers as she writhed in ecstasy the previous night flooded back to her. 

"Are you sure?" Corinne asked, stepping close to him again and sliding her hands up his chest to lock behind his beck. This time, her voice was low and sultry, a tone she'd never heard from herself before. "I've been aching for you all night." _Did those words just come from **me**?_ she asked herself, more than a little amazed at how she seemed to have no control over her mouth whatsoever. 

"Stop saying things like that," Haldir growled. His hands were clenched very hard—indeed, his entire body seemed tense like a cat poised to spring. "You must stop."

"I can't," Corinne protested, eyes heavy-lidded as she tilted her head back to gaze at him. "I want to touch you, I need to taste you." She thought of his flesh against her tongue and barely caught a moan from escaping. Would he taste salty, or sweet? Oh, the possibilities…

"You must stop," he rasped, grabbing her shoulders to give her a firm shake. "Please." His face was so intent, so pleading, that a sense of guilt cut through the haze of lust that had gripped her. "There is much you do not know about elfkind, that I must explain to you."

Taking a deep breath, she nodded and pulled back, knitting her fingers together to keep from reaching out for him. "Ok," she said. "Explain away."

Haldir stepped to the other side of the room, hands clasped behind his back as he stared at the dappling of sunlight on the floor. "Elves do not share their bodies with another on a whim," he began. "It is an act of deep friendship or love, not to be taken lightly." He looked up at her, his gaze piercing even in the waning light. "I do not think you realize how extraordinary is my longing for you, Corinne. It usually takes many days for desire to develop in an elf, and even then, it is not something that possesses us so fiercely. We… are often accused of being somewhat bland lovers."

Corinne's skepticism was evident, and made him smile. "Truly, _doll-nîn_. I do not lie. Affection for us is ever a matter of the mind and soul, rarely of the body. That is why we must be careful, you and I. For this—whatever is between us—is not typical. It is something that must be watched, and studied."

"Studied?" She couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. Both actions seemed appropriate for the weirdness of this conversation. "Studied?"

"There is much evil in the world," he told her gravely. "What if what we feel is the result of some dark plot?"

Ok, so laughing it would be. "A nefarious plan?" she asked, biting her lip when he nodded. "And it couldn't be that you're just the tiniest bit paranoid, hm?"

"What is paranoid?"

"When you believe that dangers exist when they don't. A delusion of persecution."

"You are saying that I am delusional?" He seemed deeply offended by this. "My perception has been valued by Galadriel and Celeborn since the Second Age. I am not known to deceive myself or others, even without intent."

"I'm not calling you a liar," Corinne protested.

"Are you not? If not a liar, then a madman. Which of the two is preferable? You will forgive me, I trust, if I am not complimented by either possibility?"

She sighed, feeling the last of her patience begin to ebb. "Is it possible you're thinking entirely too much about this whole thing?"

"It is far more likely," Haldir replied stiffly. "that you are thinking entirely too little about this 'whole thing'." His emphasis of the phrase dripped with distaste for her flippancy.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Haldir," she said impatiently.

"What is a cigar?" he demanded, mystified.

"It's symbolic," Corinne tried to clarify. "It just means that sometimes there's no special significance to a thing, that it is just what it appears to be."

"Then why did you not merely say so?" He was starting to look distinctly grumpy. "And you still have not explained what a cigar is."

"Argh!" she howled, throwing up her hands. "It doesn't **matter** what a cigar is!"

"Then why did you mention it?" Haldir was yelling now, and frowning fiercely. It did not, however, startle Corinne in the least to feel a powerful corresponding throb of arousal in her pelvic area. It gave her pause; perhaps he had a point. This attraction she felt for him was in direct opposition to any concept of logic. Angry, yelling elves weren't supposed to be sexy.

Corinne had never been a particularly sexual person, and certainly wasn't shallow—desiring a man simply because of his looks was a distasteful notion. If she were to be honest—and she certainly tried to be, most of the time at least—she would have to admit that she really didn't know Haldir enough to be in love with him, even as every cell in her body seemed to have grown a mouth with which to scream her adoration. The memory of how she'd cried out her love for Haldir the previous night during orgasm made her blush furiously.

He huffed out an impatient breath, and she realized that she hadn't answered him. "Haldir—" she began, but he interrupted.

"Why are you leaving me in two weeks?" he asked, suddenly on a new topic. "Do you think to amuse yourself with me a short while and then return to your life as if naught has passed between us?" He took a step closer to her. "Because if that is your intention,  you should know that I will not allow that to happen."

Corinne was sure her heart was banging so hard it would lurch right from her chest. "How… would you stop it?" she asked faintly.

"I will make you love me so much it would kill you to be apart from me," Haldir purred, coming still nearer, his grey eyes glimmering in the sunlight. "Real love, Corinne. Not some magically-induced thing that we have no restraint over. I do not trust it, and do not like feeling my control slip away from me."

"I would never just amuse myself with you, Haldir," Corinne whispered once she had the use of her larynx again. "There's no way I could go back and pretend that nothing's happened between us." His large, calloused hand came up to cup her cheek, and she pressed into him, soaking in his warmth. "And I'm sorry for what I said before… I don't think you're paranoid. You're way smarter than me, and stronger too, for being able to suspect it instead of just giving in to it."

A smirk found its way to his beautifully shaped lips as he stepped back and resumed pacing. "I am not so sure it is the preferable choice, this resistance I have." he drawled. "Only the discipline of millennia is preventing me from throwing you down and sheathing myself in your body."

"Eep," Corinne murmured, helpless to pull away from his mesmerizing silver gaze as a wave of yearning swept through her. "Oh, stop."

"Stop?" he inquired, his voice silken in the deepening shadows. "Do you really want me to stop?"

"Yes," she whimpered most unconvincingly, feeling her knees weaken as he stalked, pantherish, toward her. "Haldir, please."

"Yesss," he said slowly. "You say my name, and beg. I like that." Threading his hand into her ruddy hair, he tilted her head back with just a smidgen more force than strictly necessary. "Will you beg as my tongue finds your core?" He leaned forward and darted his tongue into her ear, mimicking the action he'd described. 

Corinne's eyes nearly crossed at the pleasure of that, and she grabbed a fistful of his cornsilk hair. "What are you doing?" she hissed. "You just got done telling me this was a bad idea. Is this payback for before?"

Haldir tilted his head to one side and smiled. "Do you not know me well enough yet to know the answer to that question?" Her eyes widened at the realization that he was pointing out, in a surprisingly vicious way, that they did not in fact know each other at all. Who'd have thought him capable of such ferocity? 

_Not her._ Corinne crossed her arms over her chest to hide the diamond-hard points of her breasts. "All right, I get the point. You didn't have to drive it home with a sledgehammer."

"Sledgehammer?" 


	8. Chapter 7

Author's Note: An anonymous revier left me a negative review. I encourage you all to read it, because it has some interesting points. My sole gripe is this: if you're going to tell me I suck, at least have the courage and decency to leave your contact information so I can email you. I take my writing seriously, and would have liked to discuss your complaints in an effort to improve the problems you see in my work. 

Without, Part 7

The next week passed in a state of tension for Corinne. She and Haldir couldn't seem to remain in the same area without either arguing or trying to take each other's clothes off, and Galadriel had given them a strongly-worded scolding about the need to keep from consummating their relationship, so she had moved into Tatharë's talan. The elleth was quiet, but sweet, and Corinne found her to be an excellent companion. A definite improvement over the roommate-from-hell she'd had her junior year, that was for sure. Not once did Tatharë bring Rúmil home in the middle of the night, dead drunk, and screw him noisily until the sun came up. For which Corinne was endlessly grateful.

Orophin had taken over his brother's post on the Eastern marches and Haldir was spending all of his free moments on the training field, running drills on his forces until they were begging for mercy. Even after he'd dismissed them, he could be found late into the evening, sending arrow after arrow thudding into dead-centre of the targets, or hacking a practice dummy to smithereens with his deadly twin knives.

Corinne spent her days closeted with Celeborn, trying to stuff as much as she could into her head of the history of Arda. She was almost to the point where she could hold a simple conversation in Sindarin, and toyed with the idea of insisting everyone around her speak only that musical language to her so she could immerse herself in it.

Unless, of course, Haldir was shouting at her. It was at those times that she found Sindarin more annoying than musical, and took to shouting back at him in a conglomeration of French, German, Russian, and Arabic. She spoke none of those with anything approaching fluency, but knew just enough to express a sense of outrage, and it never failed to shut him up for at least a few minutes. Needless to say, tensions were running high.

The fact that they seemed to be able to read each other's minds on occasion wasn't helping, either.

There was no real rhyme or reason to it, Corinne noted one lazy afternoon whilst in Celeborn's study, slouched on his squashy divan with an enormous book spread open over her lap. The Silver Lord was scribing away in his elaborate calligraphy, some lengthy and impossibly elegant missive to his son-in-law Elrond, blissfully unaware of the direction of his student's thoughts.

Right now, for example. She knew Haldir was tugging with growing impatience at an arrow that he'd embedded in the target. It was refusing to come free, and his ire was rising. She could also tell he was slightly hungry, a little thirsty, but not too tired for all that he'd been shooting for several hours by that point. Just the opposite—there was an edgy, jangling aspect to his mood that spurred him to yank viciously on the arrow, finally removing it, and stride back to where he would stand to shoot again. And again.

Well she understood 'edgy' and 'jangling'—they had been her constant companions in the past week or so, after all. With loads of sexual tension worked up between them and no way to release it, it was no wonder. She idly considered if she should try to hook up with another elf and see if it was just a general sort of horniness, but then dismissed the idea, because she had no doubt whatsoever that Haldir would either kill her, or the hapless elf she seduced, or both of them. It just wasn't worth it.

The ache in her belly hadn't diminished either, and was starting to affect her sleep and appetite—she hadn't eaten normally in about four days and already her jeans were getting a little loose. She didn't mind losing sleep so much, though. It just meant more time she could study. Celeborn had given her permission to use his study any time she wished, and now that she was more familiar with Caras Galadhon, more nights than not found her crouched beside a single candle, her finger tracing the increasingly-familiar lines of Tengwar script. Submerging herself in learning was the only thing that could take her mind off her physical discomfort.

She sighed. Galadriel had informed them that their friend, Dagnir, was going to come to Lórien to help with their situation. Corinne wondered what this Dagnir would be able to do, and asked Celeborn as much. 

He looked up from his letter, silver-gilt hair just brushing the desktop (the ends becoming inky from the still-wet letters on the parchment) and frowned in thought. "We should have told you about her as soon as we met you," he began apologetically. "Dagnir is… very much like you."

"A grad student from New York who was sent to another dimension by a magic talisman?" Corinne asked, smirking. 

"From California, actually," Celeborn told her, making her smirk melt away like ice in the sun. "Not a… grad student, and it wasn't a talisman. But she is a very powerful woman. The Valar sent her here to repair a mistake of cosmic importance, and fulfill her destiny." He smiled when she just continued to gape at him. "There is… one more thing you should know about her."

Recovering, Corinne blinked. "What's that?"

"Although she is very happily married to the mate of her soul, she and Haldir were lovers for over a decade," Celeborn said calmly. "Even now, they are very close friends, and fiercely protective of each other. If she thinks you are trying to hurt him in any way… it will not end well."

Corinne was filled with great unease. "She sounds… formidable."

"She is," he agreed, sitting back in his chair and eying her speculatively. "Entirely." 

She had the impression that her next words would go far in forming Celeborn's opinion of her. "I'll just have to show her that I don't mean harm to anyone, especially not Haldir. I only want to make him happy." A pang lodged in her chest at the thought of him, a pang of regret for all their arguing, and she wished with all her might that he were with her at that moment. A slight buzzing from her pocket made her start. "What the--?" 

Corinne almost put her hand in her pocket to explore the mystery, but then remembered what happened the last time she did. "Shit!" she yelled, leaping to her feet and beginning to unbutton her jeans. "Shit!"

Alarmed, Celeborn jumped up as well and rounded the desk, watching with great trepidation as she began to wrench her jeans off. "Please do not," he said earnestly.

"No, no, no!" Corinne exclaimed. "It's the cartouche! Didn't I give it to Galadriel to take care of?" Toeing off her shoes, she yanked the jeans off her feet and stood before him clad only in one of her father's ancient Oxford shirts, the tails of which went past mid-thigh.

"I thought you had, yes," Celeborn mused as she grabbed the jeans by the hems and shook them vigourously. With a thunk, the cartouche fell out of the pocket to land on the floor. It was glowing brightly, the energy pulsing from it as red as blood. 

"Don't touch it!" she screeched when he bent to pick it up, grabbing his arm with hers and jerking it back. "Don't ever touch it!" Her grip on his arm changed from pushing to pulling, trying to steady herself as a double-wave of dizziness and nausea overcame her. "I feel awful." And she fainted.

Celeborn swept her into his arms before she could touch the floor and began to carry her toward the healer, calling for Galadriel as he did. She ran from her glade, wiping her hands on a cloth, making him wonder irrelevantly what she'd been doing to require hand-wiping, before dismissing the thought. "She is ill. Where is Haldir?"

"I will fetch him," Galadriel promised, and turned away, but there was no need—their march-warden was running up the path, bow still in his hand as if forgotten when he had bolted from the archery range, which is exactly what he had done. At the sight of Corinne lying limply in Celeborn's arms, he paled and put on a burst of speed, skidding to a halt when he reached them. Celeborn willingly transferred his burden to Haldir's arms, retrieving the bow he dropped to the ground. 

"_Doll-nîn_," he murmured, resting his cheek against her forehead and beginning to walk quickly toward the healer. "What has happened? And why are her trousers missing?" 

But Celeborn didn't get a chance to relate the happenings of the past few minutes, because Corinne woke up, yawning and stretching as best she could while being held in someone's arms. "Haldir," she murmured, nuzzling against his throat. "Mmm. Smell good. Love you." 

Haldir swallowed visibly and closed his eyes. Her sleepy words and warm, soft, half-clad body in his arms were making him lightheaded with desire and before he really knew what he was doing, he began to stride as fast as he could without actually running toward his own talan. 

Celeborn and Galadriel caught up with him easily, however. "You must not do this," she told him, and there was a thread of warning in her voice that managed to cut through the haze of lust in Haldir's brain. Struggling to control himself, he relinquished Corinne to Celeborn once more, who carried her away from Haldir's home toward Tatharë's. 

"My deepest regrets, Lady," Haldir said at last. "I… am not myself lately." Humiliation vied with residual lust and frustration within him, and the vague queasiness that filled him whenever Corinne was apart from him returned with a vengeance. "I am not well." He sat down hard on the ground and buried his face in his hands as vertigo threatened to overwhelm him. "I am undone, I am undone."

The last thing he remembered seeing was Galadriel's face, pinched and white, as she bent to him and then all went dark. 

***

"I must go to him!" Corinne gasped, lurching up from her bed in Tatharë's talan. "He's sick, he needs me!"

Celeborn and Tatharë looked alarmed at this revelation, and at his nod, Tatharë departed on swift feet to see what had happened to Haldir. "Rest, Corinne," Celeborn commanded, grasping her arms and lowering her back onto the bed. "Galadriel and Tatharë will tend him; you can do nothing." 

"He needs me, he needs me," Corinne moaned over and over, struggling against him. "Please, let me go to him."

"You cannot," he told her, starting to become alarmed. Her panic was lending her strength, and he was beginning to lose control of the situation. "He is being cared for."

"He needs me!" she exclaimed, fighting him with desperation, and wiggled out of his grip. She had made it to the door before he tackled her. "Ooof," Corinne said on a rough exhale as the elf's body slammed down on top of her, pinning her to the floor. "Celeborn, get off me!"

"What is this?" asked a voice. Both Corinne and Celeborn looked up to find Rúmil standing there looking impossibly amused. "Does Tatharë know you are using her home as a place for your illicit assignations?"

"Quiet yourself," Celeborn hissed at the younger elf, somehow managing to scramble to his feet whilst still looking very elegant indeed and continuing to manacle Corinne's wrist with his hand, hauling her up. She tried to peel his fingers off, but to no avail. 

"He needs me," she keened over and over. "Why won't you let me go to him?"

Rúmil frowned. "What is this?" he repeated, but this time his tone was deadly serious. "Is aught wrong with my brother?"

"I do not know," Celeborn gritted out, dragging Corinne away from the door and sitting on a chair, plunking her in his lap and wrapping his arms around her waist so he could hold onto her squirming body more securely. "Much has happened this day. Dagnir and Legolas should arrive soon. Ride out to meet them, and hurry them to Caras Galadhon."

"It will be done," Rúmil assured him, and left after a last look at Corinne, who now slumped against Celeborn's wide chest, weeping pitifully. 

***

Legolas gazed speculatively at his wife. She rode with her usual ease, body moving seamlessly with that of the horse, reins held comfortably in one hand, the other resting on her thigh. To the casual observer, she was simply enjoying a beautiful late-spring day's travel. To him, however, the tension in the upright line of her back was as obvious as if she wore a sign reading, "I am upset!" 

He knew she worried about Haldir. More than simply being her lover for over a decade, he had been her first friend in Middle-Earth, had fought by her side throughout the War of the Ring just a year ago, had comforted her when he, Legolas, had hurt her shamefully. Haldir was her pillar of strength and voice of reason, and ever did he delight in flirting shamelessly with Buffy, knowing how it … **displeased** Legolas. 

Ever since communicating with Galadriel, Buffy had been withdrawn but also… eager, in a way. She had told him that a woman had arrived in Arda from her world, and was causing trouble with her Haldir. She tried to hide her enthusiasm to meet someone from her own homeland, but Legolas knew her too well. Even though she had resigned and acclimated herself to living in Middle-Earth, ever would she remember with fondness the amenities of her old life.

She turned and flashed a smile at him, that smile that never failed to make his love for her well up in him. Reaching out, he plucked her off her mount and positioned her before him on his own, wrapping his arms tightly around her slight form as she sighed happily. Her horse was left to follow of its own accord, which it did willingly. 

A year they had been wed, and much had occurred since. They had founded what Buffy would insist upon calling an 'elf commune': Sérevinya, or 'New Place of Rest' in Common, and now had over two score of his kind living there. Minas Ithil was nearing the end of its lengthy renovation, much to the delight of its rulers, Buffy's sister, Dawn and her husband Boromir; and Gimli's supervision of the rebuilding of Minas Tirith was nearly complete as well. True to Eowyn's prediction before Dawn's wedding she and Faramir were expecting their first child before next spring, and Elessar and Arwen were simply enjoying being together as he pulled together the remnants of the great kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. 

They crossed the Limlight, and the mellyrn of Lothlórien were a dark line on the distant horizon. Already, the air seemed fresher, less dry than that of the Wold that they had just left. A speck in the distance caught his notice, and he peered closely at it. Not long did it take him to ascertain it was an elf, riding at great speed toward them. 

Buffy lifted her face from where she'd snuggled against his shoulder and gazed northwards. "It's Rúmil," she muttered, sitting up straight. "For him to be riding like that toward us…" she paled a bit, and hopped lightly to the ground, grabbing the reins of her horse and leaping into the saddle, for she did not ride bareback in the elven way. Glancing at her husband, she saw he was as ready as she, and spurred her mount to a gallop.

Within an hour they and Rúmil had met. "You came alone?" he demanded, only slightly breathless from his own wild ride. "Do not let Haldir know; he is…"

"It was quicker," Buffy replied. "Haldir's what?"

Rúmil shut his eyes, so like his brother's, a long moment. When he opened them, they flared with pain and worry. "He was unconscious when I left Caras Galadhon," he said at last. "And Celeborn has had to restrain Corinne, she is frantic with worry for Haldir."

Buffy squared her shoulders. "Let's go."

Legolas was about to ask if she should rest; they had been traveling since dawn and it was now nearing dusk, but decided from the glint in his wife's eyes that it would be an unwise question. 

They travelled hard, all that night. Buffy's sole concession to fatigue was to sleep in Legolas' arms while they rode. She woke when they reached the edge of Lórien and couldn't ride with any speed through the trees. Legolas was very glad to be able to see the splendor of the forest without hindrance of blindfold, as had been his misfortune on his first entrance to this place. Just as he recalled, the trees were immense and magnificent, but there was something diminished about them, perceptible only to an elf's gaze.

His thoughts must have shown on his face, for Rúmil nodded. "Ever since the Ring was unmade, the power of the other rings has lessened. Galadriel's power is not what it was, and the Golden Wood is slightly less… golden now."

Legolas murmured something noncommittal and continued to trudge along the path, allowing himself to feel a moment's fear at the uncertainty of the future. For his entire existence, all two thousand plus years of it, certain things had been facts: his birthplace, Mirkwood, was nearly overrun with orcs and spiders; caution was a way of life; darkness hovered over the land, and it was only through the three elves who wielded the rings of power that it was kept at bay at all. 

Though it was true that the darkness had been weakened, still it was not gone entirely. If the rings held their power no longer, how vulnerable were the lands of Arda? What foothold could be gained by evil, now that the protectors of Middle-Earth were handicapped in their task? This new issue of Haldir and a woman who, unlike Buffy, had no Valar-sponsored destiny, caused great anxiety to be born within Legolas. 

But he would not burden her with his misgivings; not yet. Her beloved face was strained with concern for her friend, and he would not add to her worries with his own until this newest problem had been hurdled. Taking her hand, he gave it a reassuring squeeze and lifted it to his lips for a brief kiss. Her smile at him, briefly erasing her expression of unease, reassured him that even were there evil coming, it would not succeed. Not if he and Buffy were there to prevent it. 


	9. Chapter 8

Without, Author's Note

10/27/03

Without chapter 8 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

 http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	10. Chapter 9

Author's Note: If you have no idea what I'm talking about when I mention an Edvard Munch painting, visit the Pictures section of my yahoo group, and click on the pic titled "Scream". I think you'll get my obscurity then. J

And 10 points if you know what song's playing during the fashion show J.

Without, Part 9

Haldir and Corinne went to bed early that night, and Caras Galadhon was treated to several hours of lusty noise-making before the talan fell silent once more. Nothing dire seemed to be happening as a result of their sort-of shagging, Buffy noted. In fact, if anything, Haldir's haughty Glare O' Death was almost back to its former glory, and Corinne didn't look at him a single time during lunch, preferring to scribble notes in one of her notebooks about what she was eating.

"I understand how _lembas_ is waybread, makes perfect sense, _lenn_ is journey and _bas_ is bread, a specific recipe and purpose," she said apropos of absolutely nothing, "but about the other names for bread… the root is fairly obvious, but why so many variations? _Basgorn_—is the gorn here in the sense of 'impetuous' or 'valorous'?--_ bass, bast_—that's the name of another Egyptian god, by the way—_ bassoneth, bessain_."

The others stopped their discussion to stare at her. Unphased, she watched Celeborn unblinkingly, waiting for his response. When none was forthcoming, she continued. "And does the last one have anything to do with _bess_? Co-cognates, perhaps?"

"All excellent questions," Celeborn replied smoothly. "It has to do with mutation of consonants, and better explained in the library." Corinne looked positively delighted at the prospect, and eagerly followed him without a backward glance.

Galadriel smiled serenely. "They are ever like that," she said fondly. "Ever since Orophin became a march-warden 400 years ago, Celeborn has had no one to study with. This is vastly preferably to seeing him mope about."

Legolas looked at Haldir. He was watching the departing figures, but with faint amusement, and no sign of discomfort. "It does not pain you, then?" he asked.

"It does not," Haldir affirmed, and took a sip of wine. "I believe that as long as we are able to… release our tensions… we can be parted for some time."

"Yeah, about that tension-releasing," Buffy said, grinning when Haldir lifted a brow in her direction. "Are you sure that your almost-but-not-quite methods aren't going to do anything wacky with this cartouche thing?"

Haldir surveyed her over the rim of his goblet. "Of course not," he replied calmly. "But there seems little alternative. We cannot continue to function the way we were." He stood and stretched. "Now, if you will excuse me, I have some march-wardens to terrorize. I have been… regrettably lax in their training this past week."

***

"So, what year are you from?" Buffy asked Corinne later. Upon learning that the other woman had brought an entire wardrobe of clothing with her, they had retired to Haldir's bed chamber (with their respective elves, of course) to have a fashion show, as Buffy was quite starved of 'modern' garb since jumping into the portal so long ago.

"2005," Corinne replied idly, her nose buried in another book. Buffy wasn't too good at reading Tengwar; the title looked suspiciously like "Sindarin for Dummies" but that couldn't be right, no. Haldir was making more arrows (he had made approximately eight million in the past few days, or so it seemed) and Legolas was watching his wife with a distinctly predatory gleam in his blue eyes. 

"Hm," said Buffy, and twirled. "How does this look, honey?" she asked Legolas, who watched appreciatively as his wife's shapely legs were revealed by the dress' flaring skirt of periwinkle chiffon. 

"Quite nice," he replied, his voice low, and Buffy shot him a knowing smile before darting over to the pile of garments for another outfit. 

"When do you want to go?" Corinne asked suddenly, peering over the top of the hefty tome. "It should be soon, I've been here almost two weeks and have to get back so people don't think I've been abducted." She had a thought. "But I have no idea where you guys are going to stay while we're there, if it takes more than a single day. My dorm's not exactly outfitted for a slumber party, you know."

"Legolas and Dagnir can sleep on the floor; they are used to such things," Haldir informed her, earning him a frown from the other two. "For I will not be parted from you, and I doubt they will allow **us** to be parted from **them**."

"And leave the living, breathing hormones that are you two alone? I think not, says Buffy," she told them from behind the dressing screen, slinging the dress in a chiffon froth over the top before emerging in a sundress of floaty peach cotton, smoothing the material over her hips. "It's too big in the boobs," she complained, glaring at Corinne as if it were her fault Buffy had a smaller bosom.

"_Amin hiraetha_," Corinne said smoothly, grinning with delight when the elves in the room looked at her in surprise. She looked down at her bust. "Stupid things. Always causing trouble. Good for nothing at all "

"I would not say that, doll-nîn," Haldir contradicted, his voice low and silken as he met her gaze. The air between them seemed to tauten somehow, until suddenly the music that had been playing softly from Corinne's boombox blared raucously.

"—IN HIS FACE? OH NO, THAT'S JUST HIS CHARMS. IN HIS ONE EMBRACE? OH NO, THAT'S JUST HIS ARMS."

Buffy grinned at them from her position by the boombox, returning it to its previous moderate volume. Blinking, Corinne looked away from Haldir. "Just for that, you have to dance with me." And before Buffy could protest, Corinne leapt to her feet, grabbed Buffy's hands, and began spinning her around while singing along. 

"You are a **terrible** singer," Buffy complained, trying not to fall over. 

"I suck at dancing too," Corinne agreed blithely. "I'm the whitest white girl you'll ever meet. No rhythm at all."

"I would not say that," Haldir repeated, and Buffy had to tug viciously on Corinne's hands to keep her dancing and not over snogging the hot elf,  while the music blared loudly once more. 

"—HUG HIM, AND SQUEEZE HIM TIGHT, AND FIND OUT WHAT YOU WANNA KNOW-OH-OH…"

Legolas grinned and tucked his hand, which had been hovering over the volume control, back under his arm. Buffy took the opportunity to disappear behind the screen once more, this time with a long skirt of forest-green suede and silk blouse of palest lime.

"You never answered me about when we were going to go," Corinne persisted, returning to her book. 

"Rush a girl, why don't ya," Buffy said with a frown, her voice muffled by peach cotton. "Things move slowly here, including me."

"I'm beginning to realize that," commented Corinne, turning a page. "Have you realized yet that you shouldn't contact your old friends?"

Buffy poked her head out from the screen, looking stricken. "What? Why not?"

Corinne blinked at her from behind wire-rimmed spectacles, reminded Buffy so forcibly of Giles for a moment that she had to swallow hard to remove the lump in her throat. "Haldir's been telling me some of what's happened in the past year, how your sister came here through a portal?" She ended the statement as a question, wanting Buffy to confirm it. 

At Buffy's nod, she continued. "Well, we're going to 2005. If you came here in 2001, and Dawn came seventeen years later, that would be 2018. If you contact them, she's going to have thirteen years to think about things. It could radically change who she is, who she becomes. Decisions she'll make with her life."

"It wouldn't kill her to not marry her first husband," Buffy retorted. "He was a loser." 

"But he helped to form her into the Dawn that came to us, Dagnir," Legolas said quietly. "What if she did not fall in love with Boromir? He might well have died at Amon Hen. What could have happened differently? Dawn would not have been at Minas Tirith to help Eowyn defeat the Witch-King, they would not have married…"

"Mercas wouldn't have been born, and the war might have ended differently," Buffy finished. She glared at Corinne a seemingly endless moment, and then turned a rather charming pout to her husband. "I hate when people outthink me," she whined. He put a comforting arm around her, trying to stifle his smile.

Corinne just started laughing. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have no doubt you could kick my ass six ways to Sunday," she told Buffy. "And if we strike out everywhere else, we might have to contact your friends anyway." Buffy brightened at that, but still looked a little down. _Hm, time to call in the reinforcements. _"I've got chocolate, want some?"

"Yes, please," Buffy replied instantly, and linked arms with Corinne as they went into the talan's main room where food was kept.

Legolas turned to see Haldir watching the women with a fond and vastly uncharacteristic smile on his lips. "_Mellon_, what is happening to you? For you are not as I remember."

Haldir turned his piercing gaze to the other elf. "I would like to say it is only the taint of the cartouche that has wrought this change in me, but having never been in love before, I cannot say this is not how I would be were it genuine, instead of artificial." He sighed. "I fear, however, that it **is** merely that accursed object, for I observe little change in either you or Dagnir, nor Rúmil and Tatharë, since acknowledging love. I am feeling more myself, however, since… the past two nights."

"Will it subside completely if you join properly?"

"I do not know. Galadriel insists we cannot risk it." Haldir sat heavily and leaned forward, elbows on his knees as he cradled his head in his hands. "It is tempting to give in, out of desperation. The severity of the attraction, the need for proximity, the affect all are having on my behaviour—all make me greatly suspicious. I would have this done with, Legolas."

"And so it shall be," Legolas replied, dropping his hand on Haldir's shoulder. "We will free you from this thrall."

Haldir lifted his hand to cover Legolas' briefly in gratitude. "My thanks."

"Aw," said Buffy from the doorway. "The boys are getting along better, ain't that cute?" She leaned against the jamb and popped another cherry cordial in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Does this mean you and I have to be pals as well?"

"It's adorable when men bond," agreed Corinne from behind her, smiling in spite of the increasing soreness in her middle which told her it was time for more elf-nooky (darn the luck), and plucked a chocolate from the box Buffy held. "As for you and me, I'll give the idea some thought after you've put away all the clothes you've tried on. Until then, I'm withholding judgment."

***

The next morning, Galadriel helped Buffy and Corinne pack for their sojourn back to their world. The 'men' were told to go ready themselves, a suggestion at which they frowned. 

"We bring nothing but ourselves and the clothes on our backs," Haldir said. "Not even our weapons." He looked significantly disgruntled about this last. "What is there to ready?"

"Ok, then, just go away," Corinne said, pushing him and Legolas out of the talan and shutting the door firmly after. "I'm so glad we found a way around the problem!" she told the others happily. "My old personality is coming back!"

Buffy and Galadriel exchanged a glance; they were not sure about the 'real' Corinne, as she seemed exceedingly strange to them; always with her nose stuck in a book, or asking odd questions (why would anyone care about the circumference of the city of Caras Galadhon, and its ratio to the size of Lórien as a whole?). Still, Buffy reasoned, she seemed harmless enough, genuinely sorry for involving Haldir in this whole cartouche fiasco, and eager to solve it.

"There is no need to be nervous, _meldisamin_," Galadriel told her friend, who was folding things over and over and stuffing unnecessary items, like two quiver-fulls of Haldir's arrows, into the duffelbag. Corinne said nothing, but kept removing them just as Buffy put them in.

"It just feels so weird, you know?" the Slayer said in a rush, as if she'd been holding it in for a long time. "For years after I came here, I'd wake up in the morning and think, "Buffy, that was one messed-up dream.' Then I'd realize I was sleeping in a freakin' treehouse, and it wasn't a dream." She smiled sadly at Galadriel. "After I accepted that it was really… real, I was so angry. That's part of the reason I became a Ranger. I didn't want to be Angry!Buffy around you and Haldir and Celeborn all the time. Oh, and the killing things was great therapy, too."

"And after that?" Galadriel prompted, taking a pair of jeans from Buffy's mauling hands and refolding them with smooth, efficient movements. 

"After that, I had my Gift to obsess over," Buffy sighed. "That, and fond memories of home. I wished every day that I could go back, but since I couldn't, death was the next best thing. You don't know how much I wanted to jump through that portal myself when Dawn came here… if Haldir hadn't been holding me up, I might have."

"But you did not, and I do not think it is solely due to Haldir's presence," said Galadriel with a smile, and gestured for Buffy to sit in a chair, then began unbraiding her long plait. Picking up a brush, she began to run it through the long, honey-brown tresses. "Why?"

"Because I had a job to do here," Buffy replied, tilting her head back and enjoying the soothing strokes of the brush against her scalp. "Because I had new friends here, and was finally beginning to move on, and then I started falling in love with Legolas, and now I realize that my life is here and it only took me twenty years to realize it—" She stopped suddenly, turning to stare accusingly at the elf-witch. "You knew from the beginning of this discussion where it was going to go, didn't you?"

Galadriel, unperturbed, repositioned Buffy's head to face forward and rebraided her hair with nimble fingers. "I find that these things make more sense if we find them for ourselves," she said, and tied off the long hank of hair with an elaborate knot before turning to Corinne. "And you, young one? What mysteries can we solve for you?"

Corinne stiffened in surprise, not expecting to be examined in a like manner. "Um, I guess the pressing issue on my mind right now is, why Haldir? I know why I'm involved in it all, having bled a few quarts for the cartouche, and it was me who made the wish and activated the stupid thing, but… why Haldir? I'm sure there had to be some regular human guy in my own dimension having the same wistful thoughts that I was… why would I be yanked to Middle-Earth, to fall in love with an elf?" She laughed, but it was not a happy sound in the cheerful, sun-dappled room. "An elf! If I didn't have the mind-numbing pain as proof, I'd think I was locked in some bizarro fever-dream or something."

She tossed a shirt into the duffelbag and slumped into a chair. "And I can't reconcile all these different emotions in me. I grew up in Grosse Pointe. I'm not this sexual being, not especially affectionate. WASPs aren't, as a general rule, and my family is the WASPiest of the bunch. Touching Haldir all the time is almost as much discomfort as it relief. I feel… possessed, like my real self is an Edvard Munch painting inside my head while my body flings itself like a weasel in heat at the hot elf who is flinging himself, weasel-fashion, at **me**. And let me tell you, it's weird."

She took a deep breath. "Wow! Who knew all that was boiling around in there?" Plastering a bright, thoroughly unconvincing smile on her face, she said, "So, I can't wait to get back, there's this awesome Jamaican place around the corner from my dorm. Mmmm, jerk chicken! Whaddya say?"

Buffy eyed the other woman a long moment, then decided not to press the issue. "I was hoping for some Chinese, myself," she said. "Haven't had a good General Tso's in… eighteen years, really."

"Or pizza?"

"Pizza…" Buffy moaned, closing her eyes. "With sausage?"

Corinne nodded, grinning at Galadriel's expression of bewilderment. "And mushrooms," she added.

"Mushrooms…" Buffy whispered, eyelids fluttering closed at the very idea. They flew open a moment later at the soft touch of lips against hers, to find Legolas leaning over her, smiling. 

"You must be turning into a Hobbit, to speak with such desire for mushrooms," he commented. "What can have you in such a state of vegetable-lust?"

"Mushrooms are fungi, not vegetables," Corinne mentioned from the other side of the room where Haldir was trying to sneak in a snog before Galadriel could come separate them. 

"Shut it, Einstein," Buffy commanded, and wound her arms around Legolas' neck for a lengthy kiss. "Missed you," she said against his mouth. "Did you boys play nice, or was there fighting?" Both elves looked distinctly guilty for a moment before their infamous stoicism reasserted itself; suspicious, Buffy studied them. Sure enough, there was the faintest scrape on Haldir's cheekbone, and Legolas had a few smudges of dirt on his tunic. She pushed Legolas back and stood, planting her hands on her hips. "You **were** fighting!"

"It was but wrestling," Haldir said firmly. "A harmless release of—"

"Long-festering resentment between two alpha-males?" Buffy completed rashly.

"I will thank you not to place words in my mouth, Dagnir," he replied coolly, his face dropping all expression until it seemed a pale, perfect mask. "I was going to say, a harmless release of tensions about a journey that could be quite dangerous. Also," he continued, a touch of pomposity in his voice now, "if you had bothered to wait, you would have learned that it was Legolas and I against Rúmil and Orophin. Not each other. You are immortal now, Dagnir; patience is not so precious a commodity as it would be to another of your kind." 

He stared down his nose at Buffy and then all pretense at apathy fell away at the sight of her crying against Legolas' shoulder. The other elf looked somewhat baffled, too. "Why are you weeping, foolish woman?" he demanded, exasperated.

"It's so good to see you be **you** again," Buffy sniffled, and blotted her eyes with the hems of her sleeves. 

_amin hiraetha_ = I am sorry

bess = young girl

mellon = friend

_meldisamin_ = my friend (f)


	11. Chapter 10

Without, Author's Note

10/27/03

Without chapter 10 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

 http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	12. Chapter 11

Author's Note: If you're interested in seeing the Long Island shoreline, visit . This chapter dedicated to Angela, who was in a car accident. Feel better soon, hunny!

Review, please? Pretty please, with whipped cream and elves on top?

Without, Part 11

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" 

Crammed inside her tiny carrell with Buffy, who was accomodatingly holding an increasingly-tall stack of books, Corinne grimaced. It had to be Iris, the grouchier of the Anthropology Department's secretaries, who would come in on a Monday (when the department was usually closed) and pester them. She'd hoped coming in this early in the morning would allow them to avoid everyone, but success was not to be hers that day.

"We are Finnish," Haldir informed the woman calmly, as if that explained everything. Corinne clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, and Buffy bit her lip. 

"Finnish." Iris didn't seem very impressed by the information, and Corinne could almost see the woman cocking her hip to one side, all attitude. "Why are you here, then, and not in Finland?"

The elves had no answer for that, of course, and so avoided the question entirely by asking one of their own. "Are you Finnish as well?" Haldir inquired pleasantly.

A long, protracted moment of silence met his question, as Iris was black and therefore extremely unlikely to be of Scandinavian descent. "No," she said faintly, as if wondering if these two men might be dangerous in their obvious insanity. "No, I'm not Finnish."

"Alas," Legolas replied, polite as always. "For I am sure you would make an excellent Finn."

"Alas," Iris repeated, sounding very much in shock. Corinne decided to take pity on her, even as she realized she had to explain to them exactly why it was she and Buffy were telling people they were Finnish.

"Hi, Iris," she said cheerfully, pushing her way out of the carrell. "It's just me and some friends."

Iris, always one to recover quickly, said, "You're not supposed to have unauthorized people back here." She ran a gimlet eye over the stack of books Buffy was emerging with from the carrell. "What are you going to do with those? Does Professor Ives know you're taking them?"

"Well, that's the other reason we're here," Corinne said with what she hoped was a charming smile. "I need his phone number on the Island."

Iris folded her arms over her ample chest and surveyed the little group before her. She seemed to find them lacking in some way, because she finally said, "No way. You know he don't want to be disturbed during the summer."

"Yeah, I know, but this is important," Corinne replied, a note of pleading creeping into her voice. "He sent me on an errand, and something's gone horribly wrong, and I have to talk to him."

"Can't help you," Iris said flatly. "And you haven't turned in your outline for that Intro course you're teaching this fall." 

"Course outline," Corinne said, looking like a deer caught in headlights. "On it. You'll have it by Wednesday." She gazed anxiously at Iris. "You sure you won't let us have Ives' phone number?"

"Positive."

"_Should we render her unconscious, and search for the information we need_?" Haldir asked silently. 

Corinne considered the suggestion; it would certainly be a nice bit of fun after years of dealing with the difficult woman. "_No_, t_hat would be wrong_." she replied at last, not seeming entirely convinced of that. "Ok, then," she said aloud, and motioned for the others to load up with the books and follow her out.

"You can't take those with you without permission!" Iris declared, coming after them.

"Run!" Corinne urged. "We need them!" And she bolted down the hallway, the others close on her heels as Iris huffed and puffed in pursuit. "Don't bother with the elevator," she said over her shoulder, shoving open the door to the stairs.

"Thank Elbereth," Legolas muttered under his breath. Down and down they spiralled until they emerged into the lobby just as the elevator dinged. Dashing outside, they dodged pedestrians, phone booths, fire hydrants, vagrants, and Buffy's desire for an Italian ice ("Oooh, watermelon!") until they found themselves outside the downtown offices of Rent-A-Wreck. 

"Why are we renting a wreck?" Buffy asked as Corinne entered the store. "I'm not sure I want to get in a car with you."

Corinne grabbed a form and began filling in the lines. "We have to speak with Professor Ives. If we can't call him, we'll have to see him in person. Mass Transit doesn't go to Orient Point without, like, five changes, and there's no stop at all at Cutchogue—we'd still have to rent a car, or walk for miles and miles." 

"This does not seem like a wise course of action," Legolas grumbled. Beside him, Haldir bore an almost-identical scowl. 

Handing over the form to the attendant with her driver's license and credit card, she smiled winningly. "Turn those frowns upside down, guys. We're gonna see the ocean!"

"The ocean?" Legolas whispered, groping blindly for Buffy's hand. "With gulls and sand and…?"

"And waves, and saltwater, and, ooh! Taffy, mmm," Buffy was nearly hopping up and down with excitement. "Maybe we can stop and have some seafood somewhere." 

Ok, that was Legolas  and Buffy won over, but Haldir just stared at Corinne. She batted her eyelashes at him and whispered to his mind, "_The beach, Haldir. Sex on the beach. Remember?_" Indeed he did, she realized when his eyes darkened and that indefinable current tightened between them. She held out her hand; the attendant slapped the keys to their car into Corinne's palm. "Shall we be off?"

***

A few hours later, Corinne turned off the main street of the picturesque little town of Cutchogue. In the back seat, Legolas had begun hanging his head out the window about an hour before, and with his hair blowing in the breeze he strongly reminded her of a Golden Retriever only too happy to be out for a ride with his master. Buffy was snuggled up against his side, grinning widely and teasing him, which he ignored completely. 

For his part, Haldir looked perfectly relaxed, slouched back in his seat with elbow propped out the window. If not for the ear-tips revealed by the wind gusting through the car (Legolas had insisted on having all of them open, the better to breathe the increasingly briny air) he would have looked as if he'd been in automobiles all his life.

Consulting the slip of paper in her hand one last time, Corinne pulled to a stop before a small house. Its cedar shingles had long since been weathered to a silvery-grey, and its blue shutters had faded to a similar hue, making the abode seem like nothing more than a boxy piece of driftwood. Masses of rosebushes, left to fend for themselves, had tangled with each other until they formed a nearly impenetrable barrier from the curb to the front door. The effect was both organic, guaranteed to delight Legolas, and inhospitable, guaranteed to delight Haldir. Corinne was just wondering how to breech the barrier of thorns to reach the front door when it was opened and a familiar face peered out. 

"Iris called," Professor Timothy Ives said without preamble. "I've been expecting you." Beckoning them to come around to the back and gesturing to a narrow path skirting the side of the house, he shut the door. Obeying, they walked the path single-file, Buffy murmuring in comfort when Legolas whimpered at the first sight of the pounding surf at the end of the back yard. 

At the rear of the house was a screened porch, and the door squeaked loudly when Ives pushed it open for them. He was a short man, deeply tanned from his time at the shore, barrel chest and bandy-legs revealed by his half-unbuttoned Madras shirt and battered khaki shorts. It looked as if he hadn't shaved once since the last day of classes back in May.

"May… may I go to the water?" Legolas requested, his voice trembling. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes bright with unshed tears. Corinne had kind of thought it was funny, the way he became all ecstatic at the idea of the sea, but seeing how deeply affected he was touched her in spite of herself. As did the expression on Buffy's face: it seemed to be saying, without words, "Say yes, because if you don't you're in for a world of deep hurting."

"Of course," Ives replied fortunately. "Enjoy."

Legolas started out swiftly, but seemed to falter when the grass underfoot faded to creamy-gold sand. Buffy kicked off her daisy-bedecked shoes and he did likewise, his eyes fluttering closed in joy at the first touch of the warm, silky grains beneath his feet. She took his hand and urged him forward, hand over her eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun. At the very edge of the water, at the first touch of it against his toes, Legolas flung back his head and let out a single, sharp exclamation. 

Looking back at Haldir, Corinne saw his usually impassive face had gentled, and he watched his fellow elf with a profound sympathy, if not exactly comprehension. "_You don't feel the same_?" she asked in thought.

"_I do not_," he confirmed likewise, "_for my place in with Lórien, always with Lórien. But I am alone of my people in that._" She sensed a weary sort of acceptance in him, as well as a profound grief and loneliness before irritation and anger flowed through their link and, like a gate clanging shut, his mind snapped shut to her. Blinking, she saw he was glaring at her, and that Ives was watching them, forehead crinkled in puzzlement.

"Sorry," she said to her professor, and entered the screened porch, Haldir right behind her. Inside was a conglomeration of mismatched furniture, all chosen for comfort rather than appearance, and it was cool and shadowy compared to the bright summer day outside. She dropped onto the dilapidated wicker loveseat, not surprised when Haldir sat beside her.

"So," Ives said by way of introduction, ensconcing himself in a brightly patterned papasan chair and crossing his ankle over his knee. "What could possibly be so important that you'd steal books from the department and drive all the way out here?"

Corinne withdrew the cartouche from the recesses of her purse for the second time in as many days. "This," she replied, and peeled back the linen. Ives leaned forward, elbows on knees, to study it a moment. He watched the sunlight glance off the richly figured surface of the gold, turning Aker's two manes into living flame, and then he reached out a hand to trace the shapes

"No!" Corinne exclaimed, snatching her hand back and hurriedly wrapping the linen around it once more. "Don't touch it."

His gaze turned from speculative to shrewd, and he leaned back once more, reaching for a half-full beverage on the table at his side. "And why shouldn't I touch it, Corinne?"

"Because it's got some sort of weird mojo on it," she snapped, feeling like he was mocking her. And, well, he was—if the glint in his eyes was anything to go by—and that put her in a distinctly bad mood. "I don't even know how to begin explaining what's happened since I bought it at that shop you told me about." Haldir opened his mind to her again, and feeling her agitation, soothed her. She let her hand find his, and under one of the folds of her skirt, clasped it tightly, grateful for his strength.

"You should probably begin at the beginning," Ives said, and motioned to the pitcher and some glasses. "Iced tea?"

***

An hour later, Legolas and Buffy had finally been able to drag themselves away from the water and joined them, ignoring Ives' grimace when they tromped in, shaking sand free from wet feet and thirstily gulping their own iced tea. 

"So," Ives began, "You're telling me that you made a half-assed wish, and the cartouche sent you to some medieval world where there are elves and various other fantastical creatures, and you and… Haldir, here, have some bond that makes you… keep in close proximity to each other, or suffer extreme discomfort?" Corinne and Haldir nodded solemnly. He turned to the other two. "And how are you two effected by the cartouche?"

"Not at all," Buffy answered, brushing another pound of sand off her ankles. "We're the moral support. Oh, and the muscle, if it's needed." Ives stared at her, obviously disbelieving such a short, slender woman with such a sweet smile could be much 'muscle'. She just smiled all the more sweetly.

"You don't seem too medieval to me, Miss Summers," Ives told her. 

"That'd be because I'm not," she replied cheerily. "Born in 1981, sent to Middle-Earth in 2001."

"You're aging well," he commented. "You don't look a day over twenty."

"Well, aren't you the sweetie!" she replied, delighted. "I'm 39, actually, but if you think **I'm** well-preserved, ask Pissy Elf over there how old **he** is."

Ives raised his eyebrows over the nickname but turned toward Haldir, who muttered a rude word under his breath and left the porch to stand at the end of the grass and stare out over the water. "Was it something I said?" Ives murmured.

"He's just been in a bad mood these last few centuries," Buffy answered, then tucked her finally sand-free legs under her and snuggled against Legolas' side. "What can you do to help him and Corinne? 'Cause they're both pretty unhappy about this whole sitch."

"Well," Ives said slowly, "I'm not sure what **can** be done. Even were I to accept that you're telling me the truth—which I'm not persuaded of, by the way—I don't know much more than Corinne does about the whole thing. My field of expertise is Greek stele featuring hoplites," he explained apologetically. "Have you tried speaking to the whoever sold you the cartouche?"

"I would, if he were still there," Corinne replied, a sour note entering her voice. "If nothing else convinces you, maybe that will. We went there yesterday, and it's not an antiquities dealer any more, it's a sari shop. The owner insisted they'd been there over thirty years."

Ives frowned. "8080 East 59th Street is a sari shop?" he asked, incredulous. "For thirty years?" He seemed aghast. "But.. I've been getting stele there since I came to New York, back in '73." He stood abruptly and fetched a cordless phone and an aged notebook, bulging with scraps of paper and takeaway restaurant menus. Flipping through it, he apparently found the number he wanted and dialed with his thumb, leaning against the wall as he scrutinized the page before him. The shrill sound of a voice on the other end of the line carried throughout the porch, the rhythm of its Indian accent clear even over the waves on the shore in the distance.

"I'm sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number…" Ives began, and then got the most peculiar expression on his face. For a moment, it went utterly blank before a spasm of pain shook him and he dropped the phone from nerveless fingers. Corinne stood, about to go to him, when she heard a strange humming. Alarmed, she wrenched open her purse and found that the cartouche was glowing so brightly that even the linen around it seemed to be made of pure white light.

"Shit," she muttered, just as Ives blinked and seemed to recover himself. 

"You!" he said, voice incensed. "Iris called, said you've gone crazy!" 

"Professor—" Corinne said slowly, trying to calm him, but there was a wild light in his eyes.

"No! Get out!" he cried, and started toward her; but in his anxiety he didn't look where he was going, and tripped over the phone he'd dropped, landing hard on hands and knees. "Get out!"

Stunned, Corinne allowed Buffy to drag her out of the porch while Legolas collected Haldir. "Professor Ives," she tried again, but he was still railing against her as he lurched to his feet. Haldir ran to her, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him, and the four dashed back to the car. 

Behind the steering wheel, she stared out the windshield a long moment. What the hell had happened? One moment her advisor, the person who could make or break her career, been perfectly fine and the next he was treating her as a pariah. A loony pariah, no less. Had ordered her, almost frothing at the mouth, out of his house, and even now was running toward them, yelling and waving his arms.

"Hurry," Haldir urged. It broke into her baffled wonderings and, fumbling with the keys, she started the car. Flooring the gas pedal, they screeched away from the curb. Corinne drove blindly, not even aware of where she was going, only following where Buffy told her to turn until it was nearly dark and there was nowhere left to go. 

"Turn the car off," was Buffy's last instruction, and so she did. Blinking, she looked around. In the twin beams of the headlights, all she could see were some sand dunes and waving grasses. "We're… at a beach?" she said slowly.

"Yeah," Buffy replied, opening her door. "Followed the signs. I figured it would be a good place to calm down, go over what just happened back there."

Haldir came around to the driver's side and pulled Corinne out, tugging her gently to follow Buffy and Legolas. The sand rose in a slight hillock before sloping down to the water's edge, and he sat on the crest, pulling her down next to him and wrapping an arm around her waist. She dropped her head to his shoulder and allowed her panic and horror to flow, unchecked, through her mind. 

What would this mean for her? All she'd ever wanted was to study, to learn, to prove herself, and to teach what she knew to others. In her whole life, it was the only goal she'd ever held that meant anything to her. And now it looked as if it were all crumbling. Everything she'd ever hoped for, everything she'd pursued and striven and sweated for—all gone, and in the merest whisper of a moment.

She felt a gentle nudge within her mind, and knew Haldir was there with her, offering comfort in that way just as he did with his arms around her. "I know of something that will ease you," he said, his voice rumbling in his chest against her ear. 

"What's that?" she asked, sniffing, and realized she'd started to cry. 

"Look you there," he replied, nodding toward the water. Corinne lifted her head to see that Legolas had shucked every stitch of his clothing and was now frolicking, naked as the long-ago day he'd been born, in the waves while Buffy laughed helplessly at his joyful antics. As she watched, Legolas dove into an oncoming wave as nimbly as a seal, and when he surfaced he slicked back the long torrent of his pale hair and sent his wife a grin that was pure sex-on-a-stick. 

Buffy's resultant gulp was visible even in the dark, even at that distance, even to Corinne's mortal eyesight, and she couldn't stifle a laugh as Buffy yanked off the sundress and tossed it on top of the discarded pink daisy shoes to run, clad only in her panties, to the water. Legolas grabbed her just as a wave crashed into them, and for a moment the moonlit spray surrounded them like a silvery halo.

Corinne hazarded a glance up at Haldir; he was watching his friends with a peculiar expression; not quite envy, not quite happiness, and yet both at the same time. "We cannot allow them to have all the enjoyment," he told her gravely, and she knew he knew she was watching him. Then he stood and held out his hand to help her up. 

Slowly, deliberately, Haldir removed his clothing and then stared at her until she did the same and, like Buffy, stood wearing only her knickers. "I see Dagnir is not the only one with a fondness for pink daisies," he commented as he stared appreciatively at her undergarments. Then he threw her over his shoulder before striding down to the ocean.

Corinne would have protested if she hadn't been so distracted by the sight of his marvelous peach of an ass right in front of her face, and couldn't resist giving a bite to one of the firm, ivory-pale cheeks. If the feel of his rounded flesh between her teeth hadn't been reward enough, then his most unGuardianlike squeal of surprise certainly was. 

Of course, then he dumped her right in the water and stood there, hands on hips, smirking down at her when she resurfaced, sputtering and threatening dire consequences. To the side, Buffy and Legolas laughed, their arms around each other and hair hanging in salty, sandy ropes around their smiling faces. Then Haldir grabbed her hand and hauled her upright a second time, enclosing her in his embrace as another wave came forward to kiss the shore, and Corinne thought that even if everything was going straight to hell, perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing, after all, if it meant she could have this moment with him, with them all.


	13. Chapter 12

Author's Note: I know that Buffy jumped the portal in May 2001 and 9-11 happened in September, but for these purposes let's just say she jumped the portal after 9-11, ok?

Without, Part 12

It was after midnight when they finally arrived back in Manhattan. After returning the car (thank God for businesses being open 24-hours in the Big Apple), they headed for Corinne's dorm. "We'll have to make it quick," she said glumly. "I have no doubt that between Iris and Ives, they've called the cops. May have already changed the lock on me."

Her euphoria had only lasted until they were heading back to the city and Buffy and Legolas had fallen asleep in the back seat. Neither Corinne nor Haldir being the chatty type, she'd driven in silence, which had given her plenty of opportunity to stew over the mess her life had become. Sometimes she felt the consoling brush of his mind against her, a fleeting whisper of comfort, but most of the time he seemed lost in his own thoughts, and left her alone. _He's got his own issues to deal with_, Corinne reminded herself. 

Creeping as silently as they could, they packed anything she'd left in the room (which, as she'd already brought most of it to Lórien, wasn't too much) and tiptoed out again. Corinne gave her dorm one last, lingering glance before shutting the door. The quiet snick of the lock was apparently enough to signal their presence, because Sandra opened her door and stared at them.

"Corinne," she said, "what the **hell** is going on?"

"Um, nothing?" Corinne replied nervously.

Sandra crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. "There were cops here asking about you, and Iris called like forty times." She peered at the elves and Buffy. "This has to do with you guys, doesn't it?"

"You got us," Buffy said cheerfully. "We cause trouble wherever we go. It's a gift. Well, that and the death."

Corinne took a deep breath and counted to ten. "We have to go. Please don't tell anyone you've seen us?"

Sandra grudgingly agreed, and Corinne surprised her with a brief hug before allowing Haldir to tug her away. Outside, the city was still bustling but in that darkly thrilling way that cities have. In spite of her general sense of gloom, she felt her pulse race and felt the urge to throw back her head and laugh in exhilaration. It was nighttime in Manhattan, and she was, marginally at least, 'on the lam'. Anything was possible.

As it happened, however, and somewhat to her disappointment, nothing exciting occurred. They walked a few blocks to a modest hotel, Corinne extracted from her overused wallet a credit card to pay for a room with two beds, and they went to sleep. Neither couple complained about the lack of privacy, as all were exhausted by the day's events to be much interested in the other besides their function as bed-warmer and cuddle-provider.

The next morning, Buffy and Legolas decided to venture out alone in pursuit of breakfast, leaving the other two alone to research contact information for her friends in California.

"Dammit," Corinne muttered from her perch at the desk, where she was glaring at her laptop's monitor. "This isn't making any sense at all." Haldir raised a brow at her from where he lounged on their bed. "None of the people on Buffy's list are showing up on the white pages sites." 

So far, she'd had no luck whatsoever, and decided to simply try typing "Willow Rosenberg" into a search engine. What she found in the results made her gasp. "It's an obituary," she said in amazement. "Willow is dead, has been for years."

"Dead?" Haldir sat up, suddenly on full alert. "That is impossible. I saw her through the portal, with my own eyes, when Dawn came to Arda."

"I don't know what to tell you," she said, typing in name after name, and coming up with the same results: Alexander Harris, Daniel Osborne, Cordelia Chase.

Buffy Summers.

"Something's not right here," Corinne said at last. "This obituary says Buffy died when she was fifteen, as a student at Hemery High in Los Angeles. This is all wrong."

They had no time to consider the issue further, however, because the woman in question chose that moment to fling open the door and run in, Legolas close on her heels and bearing a large paper sack. "Did they rebuild them?"

"What?" Corinne sat back in the chair and pushed her glasses up on top of her head. Buffy was all windblown, with bright spots of colour on her cheeks, and her eyes were apprehensive. "Rebuild what?"

"The Twin Towers. Did they rebuild them?"

Corinne frowned. "Why would they rebuild them? Is there something wrong with them?"

Buffy was quiet a very, very long time. She took the sack from Legolas, who was watching his wife with concern, and began carefully, almost ceremoniously, arranging bagels and styrofoam coffee cups on the desk. She even laid out napkins and spoons and packets of sugar and those tiny plastic buckets of half-and-half. Then she began stacking the half-and-half into little pyramids and Corinne lost her patience.

"Buffy!" she yelled. "What is wrong with you?"

"We went for a little walk around, came to a park, climbed a tree. From the top of the tree, we had a pretty good view of downtown." Buffy put down the creamers and turned wide eyes to Corinne. "Did anything happen, that you might recall, to the Twin Towers in 2001?"

The other woman huffed out a breath as she thought. "No. Nothing. Why?"

"Then, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas any more. Because back on Earth—**my** Earth-- terrorists crashed planes into them, and they collapsed. There was a big hole in the skyline where they used to be. But they're still up, and in one piece, here… if they haven't been attacked, then we're not on my Earth."

Corinne stared in horror, and then comprehension dawned on her face. She nodded. "That makes more sense, then."

"Not much is making sense anymore," Buffy complained, and drained half of one cup of coffee in a single gulp. 

"Look," Corinne said, and turned the laptop so Buffy could read it. There, on the screen, was the obituary of one Elizabeth Anne Summers, 1981 – 1996. 

"1996?" Buffy breathed. "That would mean… that in this dimension, **I** died instead of Merrick, that I never went to Sunnydale." She looked at the others in turn. "It also means that I never met Giles. He won't know me here, won't trust me… hell, in this world, I've been dead for almost ten years." In frustration, she slammed her fist down on the table, making the bagels and coffee jump. 

"I believe that is the least of our worries at this time," Legolas murmured, and they turned to see him standing with his ear pressed to the door. "They come for us; quickly, gather our things," he told Buffy, who leapt up and began cramming everything she could into the monstrous duffelbag. 

"How could they find us so quickly?" Haldir asked Corinne as she shut off the laptop and began packing their breakfast back into the paper sack.

"Traced the credit card," she said breathlessly. "Dammit, I should have thought of that. I'm no good at this criminal evasion stuff. What the hell are we going to go?" She dashed to the window and flung open the drapes; there was a tiny balcony, barely large enough for a single person to stand on, and they were seven stories up. "You three could do some crazy Tarzan maneuver, I'm sure, but I'm screwed," she stated plainly, shoulders slumping in defeat. 

"Not necessarily," Haldir replied smoothly, and held up the linen packet that was the cartouche as a knock came at the door. It was already starting to glow.

"Management, open up," said a man's voice. "We've got the police here."

Corinne looked around the room. The duffelbag was bulging and could not be zipped, but everything was in it; Buffy grasped its handles in one hand and Legolas' arm in the other. "I won't even need the incantation," she muttered, pulling the linen off. "I really, really, really want us to be back in Arda, in Lórien, in Haldir's talan," she said, and obediently, the cartouche began to glow. 

The police were banging on the door now, and there was the scrape of a key in the lock. "Hold tight, everyone," Corinne instructed, clutching at Haldir as she wrapped her fingers around Aker's little golden figure. The light flared brightly until they were forced to close their eyes against it, and they could hear the slam as the door was finally opened forcefully and the shouts of the police as their quarry simply vanished into thin air. 

The last sound they heard, however, was of a gunshot.

***

"Let me get this straight," Corinne said, her voice shaking as Buffy and Legolas tended to the new hole in Haldir's upper arm. "You couldn't just leave the bagels and coffee, and when you reached out for the bag, they shot you?"

"I am very hungry," he replied simply. "We have paid for them, there was no reason to leave them there." And he took a big bite of his pumpernickel bagel with extra cream cheese, managing to smirk even as he chewed. 

"Uh, Haldir, maybe you better just shut up," Buffy said, eyeing the way Corinne was clenching and unclenching her fists as she paced the sitting room of his talan. 

"Better yet, Oscar, toss me one of those bad boys," said a voice from the doorway, and all four turned to see Dawn leaning against the jamb, surveying them with a mixture of amusement and displeasure. "I find myself somewhat peckish after a panicked five-day ride with no sleep, " she continued pointedly.

Buffy went pale and Legolas took a step backward. Haldir lobbed a bagel at her head—hard—which she caught effortlessly with one hand before coming forward. Corinne just watched with interest.

"So, Boromir and Mercas and I were in Minas Tirith visiting Faramir and Eowyn when we learned my sister and her husband were nowhere to be found, in all of Ithilien," Dawn began conversationally, her manner nonchalant but her tone hard enough to break a diamond off of. She bit deeply into the bagel and continued while she chewed. "You can imagine the delight with which this news was received. So much delight, in fact, that the king himself has led a search party for them. He went west to Rohan, and Boromir and I came north. Woo, Elessar's gonna be so happy to learn that his trip all the way to Edoras was for nothing…" 

"Dawnie…" Buffy began, looking shame-faced, but her sister cut her off.

 "Do you realize that he's so worked up about the two of you going missing, Buffy, that Arwen went with him to hold him together?" All pretense at pleasantry was dropped; Dawn was, plainly put, incensed.. "And Gimli's been having nightmares that you've been captured and tortured by orcs."

"Gimli…" Legolas murmured sorrowfully, and Dawn rounded on him.

"You're over two thousand frickin' years old! How could you not think to even leave a note?" she demanded before turning back to Buffy. "We got here yesterday, only to find you used the very thing that's caused all the trouble to return to Earth and EAT BAGELS."

"Well," Buffy said in a small voice, "That's not all we've been doing."

"Certainly not," Corinne piped up indignantly, feeling compelled to defend her new friends. "We also went shopping."

There was an ominous silence while Dawn took another vicious bite of thickly-buttered blueberry bagel, glaring at them the whole while. "Shopping," she repeated flatly.

"We stole books from an institution of learning, and were chased by a woman who is most certainly not Finnish," Legolas said, smiling hopefully. Then his face fell as he recalled the consequences of those actions. "But then she roused the authorities on us."

"I was shot," Haldir said, and help up his now-bandaged arm as proof. "It hurts," he added a moment later.

"And we all went skinny-dipping in the ocean as my career went down in flames," Corinne mentioned with more that a trace of self-pity.

"I like to think of it more as 'a blaze of glory'," Buffy told her with a sympathetic pat on the arm before turning to Dawn, all big hazel eyes and trembling pink lips. "We're really, very, very sorry," Buffy said, looking downright pathetic, "A **world** of sorry, Dawnie. Galadriel said Haldir was in trouble, and we just didn't think." 

Dawn crammed the last quarter of the bagel in her mouth and brushed off her hands as she glowered at them, her face lumpy. When she could speak again, she said, "I'm gonna let Boromir deal with you. He's even more pissed off than I am." And grabbing one of the coffees, she stomped out.

Not thirty seconds later, Boromir entered the talan. "Greetings," he said calmly, his gaze flicking over all of them to rest on Corinne. "I am Boromir of Gondor, husband to Dawn," he said by way of introduction, bowing briefly. 

"Corinne of New York," she replied, trying (and failing) to curtsey. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise," he said gravely. "It is my understanding that you are the reason for all the excitement, Lady Corinne."

"Well, yeah, but not on purpose," she hedged. "It's all been one big, crazy mistake. I'm really sorry."

"Please do not be," Boromir replied with a broad smile, surprising them all. "I am in your debt, for providing me with a reason to leave Minas Ithil. If I had to spend one more day listening to farmers gripe about how many more acres their neighbours had received than them, I would have run mad."

Taking a step closer, he whispered conspiratorially, "And do not believe what Dawn says about Elessar being upset. He is just as thrilled as I to have a reason to leave behind his tiresome duties and travel once more. Arwen is with him so they may adventure together, and I expect them here within the next week, as Galadriel has told her granddaughter to join us in this fair city."

"But how close to Dawn's telling is Gimli, truly?" Legolas asked with no small amount of trepidation. If the dwarf were truly angered, there would indeed be hell to pay.

"He is somewhat anxious, for it is not his elf-friend's way to simply leave without a trace—" here Boromir permitted a bit of reproach to enter his voice, and Legolas bowed his head accordingly, "—but he too was most pleased to have a reason to come see the fair elf-witch once more."

At this point, Corinne tuned out of the conversation, preferring to submerge herself in more thoughts of gloom. Though she'd had been able to tamp down her increasing panic over the events of the preceding day, it was fast rising to a level she could no longer ignore or control. Their trip to New York had not only been a complete wash-out as far as learning more about the cartouche, but her entire life had been wrecked as well. She was jobless, and couldn't even live in her dorm any longer. 

As this realization dawned upon her she whimpered, "I'm homeless. A vagrant. I'm going to have to get a sign that reads, 'Will teach socio-anthropology for food'. Then the guys who clean your windshield are going to beat me up, and I'll end up a crack ho in Hell's Kitchen who holds out on her pimp."

Before she could get up a good head of steam on the pathos, however, Buffy sighed. "Could you **be** any more of a drama queen?" Standing, she slapped her hands onto her hips and gave Corinne a fierce glare for good measure. "As if we'd ever let anything like that happen to you!"

Corinne blinked, and then said with her usual eloquence, "Huh?"

Buffy sighed again. "We're not going to just turn you out into the wild, you know. I'm sure there's plenty you could do in Gondor."

"I don't want to go to Gondor!" Corinne exclaimed, furious tears streaming down her face.. "This isn't my world! I want to go back to New York, to my dorm, to my **life**! I want everything as it was before it all went straight to hell!" 

"We all want things we can't have!" Buffy shouted back. "Do you think I wanted to come here? That I wanted to be separated from my sister, my friends, my home? I didn't! But I couldn't change it, and I learned to accept it and move on! And now I have a great life! And—what are you doing?" For Corinne was heeding her not at all, instead rummaging through her purse and then her pockets for something. "Oh, no you don't," Buffy said grimly as the other woman held up the cartouche. It was already starting to glow.

Buffy grabbed a paper napkin from the bagel sack and snatched the cartouche from Corinne, looking like she'd prefer nothing more than to pelt the other woman with it. Corinne rounded on her, fists clenched and eyes snapping with anger, and opened her mouth to speak.

Haldir stood at this point, and by force of personality alone drew the attention of everyone else in the room. "Everyone depart," he commanded. "Not you," he said to Corinne, who was almost out the door. Reluctantly, she returned. Grasping her shoulders, he pushed her gently into a chair and drew up another to face her. "This wound pains me, and all the shouting has made me surly," he informed her, "so do not interrupt me, or you will not like the consequences."

Corinne opened her mouth again to speak, and Haldir quirked a brow, waiting. Wisely, she decided to remain silent. "Excellent choice," was the last Buffy could hear him say as Boromir closed the door behind himself.

Tilting his head to the side, Boromir gazed at his sister-in-law a long moment. "I am glad you are safe," he said at last. "Though it would not have inconvenienced you much to tell at least one person you were coming here."

"Argh!" Buffy groaned, ire still up from dealing with Corinne, and descended the stairs to the ground. "Enough with the guilt, already. The point has been delivered, received, and is currently lodged right between my eyes, ok?"

An odd whistling noise could be heard from somewhere to the left; Legolas looked thoughtful, and caught the axe in mid-air just before it would have embedded itself into his shining golden head. "Friend Gimli," he said calmly, "I fear you have misplaced your weapon."

The dwarf rounded an especially large mallorn and stomped toward them. "Gimli son of Glóin never misplaces his weapon," he growled with great menace. "Nor do I miss, as well you know, accursed elf." He turned to Buffy. "Be you glad I have just the one axe, Dagnir, else you'd have been plucking one from the air as well." He would have continued his tirade then, but Buffy hugged and kissed him (she was aiming for his cheek, but with so much hair she just figured anywhere on the beard was close enough) and he quite lost his train of thought. "Hmph," he settled for saying, and snatched his axe back from Legolas.

"How're the renovations coming?" she asked him, linking arms with him as they walked toward Galadriel's and Celeborn's talan. 

Gimli heaved a huge sigh. "They are why I am not more angry at you," he admitted, "for those dwarves are indeed hard to cope with, and long do the days seem after battling with them to follow plans."

"Be of good cheer!" Legolas suggested from where he walked with Boromir behind them, "for after you complete repairs in Minas Tirith, there is all of Osgiliath to mend!" Then he made a noise suspiciously like a giggle as he scampered out of Gimli's reach, and the two of them commenced a rousing game of 'tag' through the trees of Lothlórien. 

"Geez, and they say we humans are immature," Buffy pretended to complain to Boromir. "So, how pissed is Dawn, really?"

He grinned. "She is considerably calmer than when we arrived here and learned of the situation. I believe she is more angry that you did not think to consult with her before going to Corinne's world, and put yourselves in grave danger… have you forgotten her training with Giles?"

"Oh, crap," Buffy replied, slapping her forehead as they rounded a curve in the path. Even after a year, she still tended to think of her sister as 'little Dawnie' instead of a grown woman with a research career before she'd given it all up to join Buffy in Middle-Earth. "I **did** forget, completely. She must know all about this Weshem-ib thingy!"

"Yeah, I do," Dawn said from her seat at the base of the steps leading up to Galadriel's talan. She'd finished the coffee long ago and had proceeded to peel the styrofoam cup into little white puffy shreds. Standing, she jammed the cup's remains into her pocket. "When are you going to accept that I'm an adult now, Buffy? I'm married, I have a son. What else will it take, grey hair and wrinkles?"

"I doubt even that would work," Buffy replied, and hugged her. "I'm sorry, Dawn. I really am."

Dawn sighed. "All right, you're forgiven. This time. And only because you were smart and brought me a present." 

"Present?" Buffy looked a little panicked until she remembered something. "Present! Yeah! Sure did! Of course I did! I wouldn't forget my Dawnie, nope, not me." She craned her head around, looking for her husband. "I'll just go find Legolas and get your… er… present." And she darted off in the direction she'd last seen him and Gimli.

Dawn and Boromir just exchanged a look over Buffy's head. "She **so** did not get me a present," she said as he put his arm around her waist.  
  
"But watching her pretend she has is present enough, is it not, sweet?" he asked with a grin, and kissed her forehead.


	14. Chapter 13

Author's Note: This chapter dedicated to samalcala88, who took the time to email me with a problem he saw in the last chapter. It's people like you who make my writing better, pointing out what can be improved on! Thanks so much, sweetie!

The end of this chapter is very, very silly. I take no responsibility for any injuries to your optic muscles if you sprain them whilst rolling your eyes.

Without, Part 13

Corinne could barely see through the tears in her eyes as Haldir sat opposite her. "Are you going to lecture me about how much life sucks, too?" she asked with a bit of sulk.

But his answer was not what she expected; instead of anger, or disappointment, or anything else she might have thought possible, he said, "Elves are beings of great power. It is most obvious in Galadriel; she has cultivated her gift over many centuries. But all of us have some latent abilities." He apparently read Corinne's confusion on her face, because he explained why he was saying this. "I have been shielding you from the brunt of my mind, thinking you unable to accept such a large amount of information… so many years of memories."

"I haven't shielded anything," she said hesitantly. "Does this mean you know…" she trailed off as horror dawned within her. 

Haldir nodded. "I know everything about you; every memory, every thought. No, do not be ashamed," he urged, pressing her hand between his own as she hung her head, allowing her hair to swing forward and hide her flushed face. "It is what keeps me from being very angry with you at this moment. I know the depths of your despair, and do not fault you for them."

He lifted her chin with a finger. "But that does not mean I will allow it to continue. I wish to share myself with you, Corinne, all my thousands of years. It will not be easy, nor enjoyable, but I believe you will… gain wisdom from it, and become able to endure this travail." He paused a moment. "And think not with the desire the cartouche has brought to life within you for me… this is no trivial matter. Will you accept me?"

Corinne struggled to separate her body's insistent urgings to join with him in every way possible from the pure, cold logic of her mind. Haldir had information and knowledge that could help her; it would be foolish to refuse it. "I'm scared," she admitted. "I don't know how much more I can take today."

"I will not leave you," Haldir said quietly. "You run always from the pain, you submerge yourself in that which causes none, but pain is ever in the world, Corinne. Better you learn to endure. There is naught wrong with weeping; weep, if you must. Scream, if you must. But to shut yourself from the pain and flee from its cause… ai, _doll-nîn_, that will deaden you long ere you are deep in the ground."

Clenching her hands on his, Corinne nodded slowly. "Ok," she said at last. "As long as you'll be here with me. Do it."

Haldir touched her eyelids with a gentle fingertip, then traced her nose to the tip and brushed over her lips. "Be at ease," he urged in his deepest, most soothing tones. Corinne let the tension flow out of her as she felt the familiar nudge of his mind against hers, as if asking permission. She gave it, and felt the tendril of his consciousness penetrate her own. "_Be at ease_," he thought to her, and then the memories began to surge into her, softly, like small waves lapping at the shore. 

Haldir as a child, with his mother and father: warmth, comfort, safety, love. His parents, with Orophin as an infant: protectiveness, tenderness. Haldir as a young adult, his martial skill swiftly realized and recognized: pride, confidence, ambition. Orophin as a gangly teenager standing beside Haldir, who carried the toddler Rúmil as they buried their parents: grief, fear, trepidation. Haldir raising his young brothers, making more mistakes than he would have liked: affection, devotion, frustration. His few tentative forays into physical intimacy: satisfactory, but always lacking the singular, essential element of love.

Galadriel and Celeborn making him one of their march-wardens: joy, honour, satisfaction. Haldir fighting in the first war of the ring, watching such stars of the elven world cut down in their prime: guilt at surviving when the likes of Gil-galad had perished, anxiety, victory. Centuries of patrolling the forest of Lórien, gaining intimate knowledge of each tree: familiarity, fluency, expertise. Being named Guardian of the Golden Wood: past the point of pride, now; just deep delight, and knowledge of his suitability for the task. 

Haldir finding friendship with the strange mortal woman who fell from the sky, and then pleasure: contentment, but a faintly hollow ache taking root deep within, loneliness. The second war of the ring, and Buffy taking Legolas for her husband: bittersweet joy on their behalf, but faint envy, and the hollowness a bit more pronounced. Haldir requesting a new station on the eastern marches, where he could see the river: restlessness, dissatisfaction. 

And then… her. Haldir with Corinne: instant attraction, relief, a sense of completion, but also confusion and fury for his own lack of control. Realizing they were in the grip of some mystic power: profound disappointment, and a longing for his emotions to have been genuine, sadness. His anger, hurt, and chagrin when she blithely told him she would only stay a fortnight, as if he were to be used and discarded when her time was done. 

Their first night of sex, such as it had been: blinding pleasure, and deep relief of the gnawing hunger within to sate himself in her body, only slightly lessened by the lack of actual intercourse. The four of them in New York: trepidation, excitement, anger at how Iris and Ives had dared to treat Corinne, impotence at his inability to lash out in retaliation. Resignation that the cartouche's reach was far beyond his understanding or prevention, unease that it could be a symptom for yet another evil force trying to gain control over not only Arda, but multiple dimensions at once. 

Haldir watching Corinne and Buffy scream at each other, and Corinne fumbling desperately for the cartouche, wrenching pain and terror bleeding from her mind to his. Fear she would leave him, the need to console, the urge to subdue her fears with lovemaking, offering whatever comfort that could provide. The realization that lovemaking was the last thing that would work, and that he had to share himself as he had not yet done. 

Corinne opened her eyes; her lashes were so sodden they threw little sparkles around her range of vision, making Haldir's face before her even more of a dazzling vision than it usually was. "You didn't have to do that," she murmured in awe. "There was nothing compulsory about it. What you just shared with me… that had nothing to do with the cartouche."

Haldir opened his eyes then, fixing them on her face, gaze caressing as it always did. "Did it help you?"

She nodded slowly. "I see how foolish and selfish I've been… worrying about something so petty, when there's a much bigger issue at work… so much more than just my own life, my own existence. I didn't realize…I'm so sorry."

"It is not to me you should apologize," he said, and she hung her head once more.

"I know." It was a whisper of sound, and she couldn't even be sure she'd said it—perhaps it had only been a thought? It didn't seem to matter. Haldir knew; he always knew. 

And once more he raised her face, and leaned forward to kiss her. It was not a kiss of desire; the touch of his lips, warm and soft, healed her with their promise. "I will not leave you," Haldir said. "Never fear for being alone. Even if, when we are free of the cartouche's thrall, you decide you cannot love me, you will always have a home with me."

Corinne blinked in confusion. What had he just said? Before she could give the matter any thought, however, his lips were on hers again, but this time it **was** a kiss of desire—probing, teasing, tasting, encouraging. The flames of her lust for him—only ever banked, never extinguished—roared to life and she slid her arms around his neck. She was dimly aware of her clothing being removed, but then her skin was against his and any thoughts she may have had receded into a muzzy grey void where there was nothing but sensation and lust and oh, such devotion and gratitude for this beautiful creature that held her. 

Halfway back to Haldir's talan, Buffy's sensitive ears picked up on the unmistakable sounds of passion. "Jeez, they're at it again. That cartouche is like weird evil Viagra," she complained, spinning on her heel and returning to Galadriel's once more. Legolas, too, had heard, and with a saucy grin he turned as well. Boromir, Dawn, and Gimli had not noticed anything, but under those circumstances were more than happy to take Buffy's word for it. 

***

Buffy sacrificed the green and silver sari she'd bought for herself to the cause of placating Dawn, who was delighted with her gift. Against the emerald silk her hair shone like mink, and the glint in Boromir's eyes indicated that he rather liked it, too. Galadriel, too, was quite pleased, and immediately wrapped the blue and bronze silk around herself. It was a striking contrast to her usual floaty white frocks, and her golden hair and blue eyes seemed even more vivid than usual. After seeing her in it, Celeborn's lips seemed permanently curved into a mysterious smile the rest of the day.

Corinne offered her golden-yellow sari to Buffy as a peace offering, and Buffy tried it on to model it as Dawn and Galadriel had done, but refused to keep it. "No, Haldir's panting to see you in it," she told the other woman. "I couldn't disappoint him like that. Besides, I have my shoes. I'm good." She held out one of her legs, proudly displaying the pink daisy shoes that hadn't left her feet since their return from New York. "Besides, yellow's not my colour."

And just like that, the tension between them was over. Corinne was amazed that Buffy was so generous and easy-going; she herself was much more likely to carry a grudge for a while, but just the same, she was pleased to let it go as they had far more important things to deal with. 

Elessar and Arwen finally arrived, late one afternoon. Corinne was only just recovering from Buffy's piercing squeal of joy as she pelted toward the king and demanding a hug, when she caught her first glimpse of Arwen Undomiel, queen of Gondor and Arnor. Tall and slender, impossibly graceful, with dark midnight-black hair tumbling in rich curls past her hips, Arwen was a fantasy come to life. 

As for Elessar, he was handsome, and somehow both regal and personable at the same time. There was a light in his eyes that spoke of his deep passion for his land and its people, and she knew he would die for them. A strange emotion she couldn't identify seized her, and she was almost overcome with the urge to weep. Thoroughly cowed by both of them, she had to be dragged forward by Haldir, and didn't say a word as he introduced her. 

"What's wrong with you?" Dawn asked after the newcomers had been ushered off to bathe and eat before returning for the big briefing. "You're acting all weird."

"I've never met royalty before," Corinne replied through gritted teeth. "It's… daunting. I don't know what to do. I mean, I met Ed Koch once, but he wasn't even mayor at the time, and I just shook his hand and told him I voted for him, but that was a lie because I've voted Libertarian for the past ten years. People don't vote here, or shake hands. They kiss them, and curtsey, and I can't curtsey because I fall over and look stupid."

Dawn lifted wide eyes to Buffy, who was watching and trying not to laugh. "That was a babble worthy of Willow. I don't think I understood half of what you just said," she told Corinne, turning back to her. 

"Me neither," Corinne replied miserably. "Can't we talk about the cartouche now? I've been waiting patiently all week but if we don't figure something out soon I'm going to go completely insane and start killing people."

It was an abject lie; she hadn't been waiting patiently at all, and had herself been threatened with death on numerous occasions for harassing various people on the issue. Only Celeborn's time-tested method—plunking a huge book in her lap—managed to distract her, and even now he was coming forward with The First Age: Simply Forgotten, or Does No One Care?.

"You think you can keep derailing my train of thought," she complained to him. "I'll have you know—hey, this one's got diagrams!" 

It was just that easy. 

***

When Arwen and Elessar were comfortable and clean once more, Dawn finally relented to tell them what she knew about the Weshem-ib. 

"Aker has been unhappy with his status for a good long time, it seems," Dawn began. "He wants to wreak a bit of havoc, control a few important destinies, but his powers aren't up to snuff. Doesn't have the juice for it. So, he created the cartouche. It's been used for millennia to lure stupid people." Her gaze flicking tellingly over Corinne, who scowled. "The promise of obtaining your heart's desire proves to be a powerful one, and many have been wrung dry by it."

"Wrung dry?" Elessar asked, hand rubbing his chin contemplatively. "That sounds… disturbing."

"It's pretty awful for the wringees, but the big picture is worse than that," Dawn told him. "After the deal has been made—usually with a blood sacrifice—the cartouche has a bond with the user, and it channels the force of the user's desire to Aker, who—as far as I can remember—stores it somehow. Apparently, once he has enough of this desire-energy, he's going to use it to… hm, lemme think…"

Dawn frowned, chewing on her bottom lip, sunk in thought as the rest waited. "Corinne, Aker presides over the gateway to the land of the dead, right?"

Corinne nodded slowly. "Right. It's said he can be fickle about who he allows to pass through…" She paused. "He also controls passage of the sun, and it's said that when eclipses occur, it's Aker forbidding the sun from moving across the sky."

"So… when we had those dark days back during the war, that was him?" Buffy piped up. 

Dawn looked thoughtful. "Could have been a sort of dry run for him," she said slowly, then groaned. "If only I had Giles' books… or Willow to do a 'reveal truth' spell, or Cordelia to contact the PTBs…How are we supposed to figure these things out when I don't have my usual resources?"

"Could not Gandalf be of some assistance?" Boromir suggested.

"Gandalf! Yes! Honey, you're brilliant!" Dawn exclaimed, sitting in his lap and planting a noisy kiss on his cheek before turning to the king. "Where's Gandalf?"

"I do not know," Elessar replied. "He had mentioned traveling far north, past even the hills of Evendim, and then going to the Havens to take counsel with Círdan, but…" He stopped, and rubbed his chin again. "He mentioned that we should go to Radagast if we had need of a wizard."

"Would Radagast give us an audience?" Legolas asked. "For his home is Rhosgobel, a mere day's ride from Mirkwood's edge, and he has been cloistered within for many centuries." He smirked a little. "Long has my father wanted his help in battling the dark forces in the forest, and long has he rebuffed every request."

"And your father's requests are always so… civil," Arwen murmured, sliding a sideways glance at her fellow elf. "It shocks me not that Radagast would thumb his nose at the mighty Thranduil."

"I know nothing of Radagast's thumb, nor of his nose," Legolas said gravely, "but my father is ever severe when the wizard's name is mentioned."

"Sounds like they had a bad breakup," Buffy said with a grin. "Did Radagast forget to call the next day, or something?" She pouted when only Dawn and Corinne laughed.

"I know nothing of this Radagast," Boromir said, his face apprehensive. "If he has not helped Thranduil after so many years, why would he help us, who arrive at his doorstep with hands out like beggars?"

"And it was Radagast who told Gandalf to attend Saruman in Orthanc, before the War began," Elessar added. "If he could not see Saruman's treachery; what could his skill be?"

"Gandalf could not see it either," Gimli reminded the Men. "Was he not confined atop that tower for nearly two months? And it was because of Radagast that Gwaihir rescued him from his prison, and then again came to drive away the Ringwraiths during that last battle, at the Black Gate."

All fell silent in recognition of the truth of Gimli's words. Actually, Corinne was silent because she was listening carefully to Haldir's silent explanation in her mind of what was being said. "Wow, giant eagles?" she murmured aloud. "Cool."

"Beyond cool," Buffy agreed before turning to Elessar. "I agree with Gimli; Radagast seems to have done good things for our side during the war, and if Gandalf says we can trust him, I think we can."

Legolas looked doubtful. "I have seen how Mirkwood suffers because of Radagast's neglect," he said. "He is Yavanna's own, sworn to protect the earth and its animal children, but the great forest of my birth has suffered terribly from the evil that inhabited it so long. How many trees and beasts languished and perished, and there he sat in his home of sturdy bricks, safe from the evil the befell the rest?" He sighed. "I will not gainsay if you decide to see him, but neither will I hope to his assistance."

"So, is it settled?" Dawn asked from her seat on Boromir's lap. "Are we off to see the wizard?" She pouted when only Buffy and Corinne laughed.

"It would appear so, sweet," Boromir told her when everyone else seemed to nod. 

"Who will be in our party, then?" Elessar asked. 

"Gimli son of Glóin shall be the first name spoken," the dwarf announced, making Corinne grin. He was a kick, and she couldn't wait to talk to him about his people.

"Legolas and me, and Haldir and Corinne of course," Buffy began, counting on her fingers. "Dawnie, you and Boromir coming with?" At her sister's nod, she ticked off two more fingers. "Elessar, you up for another fun trip?"

"Indeed I am, Dagnir," he affirmed. "Shall you stay with your grandparents, _a'melamin_, or journey with us?" he asked Arwen. 

She stretched with languor. "I think I shall join you, hervenn-nîn," she replied, smiling slowly. "It has been long ere I've had a satisfying adventure."

Elessar got a certain glint in his eye and before the others knew it, he and Arwen were making perfectly transparent pretexts in excusing themselves. 

"Newlyweds," Buffy commented, as if she weren't married only a few months longer than them. 

"Are we not still as randy?" Legolas asked with faux concern. "Are you tired of me already? Is it time for me to begin wearing costumes, the better to incite your lust?"

Corinne got a rapid series of bizarre images parading through her mind at that, and began laughing helplessly. "Legolas the Pretty Pirate!" she gasped, slumping against Haldir in a fit of giggles. "Avast! I'm gonna walk yer plank, my buxom wench! Harrrrrrr!"

"Legolas the Dirty Doctor!" Dawn suggested between snorts. "Say 'ahhh', Naughty Nurse Buffy!"

Legolas frowned; he hadn't intended his joke to go this far, and was now fairly certain he was being made fun of. Buffy was laughing so hard she was crying.

"Legolas the Naughty Nazgûl," Gimli offered, a grin splitting his beard.

"Legolas the Gitty Gollum," Haldir murmured with a smile. "And Dagnir is his Preciousssssss, who leads him in a merry chase over hill and dale."

"Legolas the Amorous Orc," was Boromir's entry to the contest, and when Celeborn said, "Legolas the Excited Ent," giving new meaning to the phrase 'sporting wood', everyone (except Legolas himself) shouted with laughter.

"I am not convinced this is as amusing as you all seem to think," he said, crossing his arms over his chest and frowning. Everyone sobered, looking a little sorry for teasing him.

But then Galadriel said, "Legolas the Hungry Hobbit. Is that a carrot in your pocket, Legolas, or are you just very pleased to see her?"

And damn, that was just too funny to not laugh at. 

_doll-nîn_ = my dusky one

_hervenn-nîn_ = my husband

_a'melamin_ = my love


	15. Chapter 14

Author's Note: This chapter made my spell-check go insane. Finally, my edumacation presents a use for itself! My very own Froggy poem. Yeah, I know. I should stick to writing prose. Can I just mention, the word _vérouillées_ is REALLY fun? Say it a few times… you know you want to. vay-RROO-wee-ay. vay-RROO-wee-ay. Fun!

Without, Part 14

In retrospect, the trip itself was much easier than the preparations. Much less stressful, in any event.

First, Celeborn and Galadriel requested that they cross the Anduin there at Lothlórien and travel up its eastern shores, the better to patrol the new territory of East Lórien (as the southern part of Mirkwood was now known) and bring messages to the elves newly settled there from their Lord and Lady. 

Legolas was not happy about that. 

"I'm sure they wouldn't have asked if they thought we were truly in danger," Buffy said, but he frowned.

"The risks of southern Mirkwood are not to be trifled with," Legolas stated. "No matter that the Golden Lady has flung down the gate to Dol Guldur, the area is not purged of the centuries of evil." But then Galadriel asked very nicely, smiling her sweetest, and Legolas lost that argument.

Then Haldir and Rúmil had a disagreement about bringing Tatharë along. She wanted to return to Mirkwood to introduce her betrothed to her family, and since Rhosgobel was on the way, it was a reasonable request. Unless you were Haldir, at least.

"No," he said flatly. "This is no pleasure journey; I would not have her in danger." 

Rúmil squinted at his brother. "The journey would be no less dangerous if our purpose were benign."

"Our purpose isn't exactly malignant," Corinne felt compelled to point out. "We're not off to fight the great Orc war, just to get some advice from a wizard." Then she sat down with her hand on her forehead, marveling at how bizarre her life was to have just said such a thing in all seriousness.

Even Haldir's armour of protectiveness couldn't withstand the cold knife of logic, and he lost that argument.

Then Boromir and Elessar started to bicker about how many soldiers would accompany them on their voyage, and how many would return to Minas Tirith. The king gave the distinct impression of pouting. Oh, he didn't look any different—his bottom lip wasn't stuck out, and he wasn't frowning or saying anything untoward, but the petulance rolled off him in waves. Arwen was hard-pressed not to laugh at him, which was not exactly conducive to remedying the situation.

Boromir, for his part, was not pouting: he was just angry, and had not suffered to keep his displeasure to himself. "It is folly to have a monarch traipsing through lands that were the hostile dominion of Sauron a mere twelvemonth ago!" he told Elessar through gritted teeth. "You have heard Legolas; that fell place has been his home for millennia. Who better to know the perils of such a place? Will you not take his counsel?"

"I do not dispute his knowledge!" Elessar replied. "Just your insistence that we must be a huge, unwieldy force as we journey north! As a small group, we can slip unnoticed right past any who would threaten us."

"But you wish to have only the core group of us!" Boromir said, outraged. Along with Haldir and Corinne, there would be Buffy and Legolas, Boromir and Dawn, Elessar and Arwen, Gimli of course, Tatharë and Rúmil, and if both Haldir and Rúmil were going, then Orophin refused to be left behind. That made twelve. "You cannot think to have only a dozen people on this mission, five of them female!" Then Boromir fell silent, knowing he'd just stepped in it, and stepped deeply, as Buffy, Arwen, Dawn, and Tatharë all rounded on him.

Arwen stepped forward, as queen and spokeswoman—er—spokeself. "And are you saying, _mellon_, that we cannot protect ourselves? For I very much doubt that even a rough warrior as yourself would be so unwise. Especially in the case of Dagnir." It was said in a voice as dark, sweet, and deadly as poison-laced chocolates, and the bobbing of his Adam's apple was very visible as he swallowed.

"He can say it about me all he likes," Corinne said from behind the feminine throng around Boromir. "I'm useless in a fight. Unless I can hit an orc with a book, and somehow I doubt they'd just stand there while I did it." Then she had an idea. "Ooh! But I've got mace, and my Tazer! I'll just treat 'em like muggers!" She smiled proudly. 

Boromir glowered at Elessar over the women's' heads. "This will not do," he said sourly. "We need to have an escort."

"I do not want a great force accompanying us!" Elessar responded heatedly. "Twill draw attention, and assure that we be attacked!"

"What say you to a smaller escort?" Haldir asked from where he lounged against the wall, surveying the argument with a faint smile on his lips. "A select group of your soldiers, and my archers? No more than ten of each."

"Twenty!" Elessar boomed. "In addition to our twelve? We might as well send out invitations to the orcs and tell them to come dine on us, for all the noise we will make."

"Your men might make noise, but I assure you my archers will make none," Haldir replied smoothly. "But if it concerns you, send all your men home, and our guard shall be completely elven."

"I cannot do that either," Elessar grumbled. "Twould be a grave insult." 

Corinne was beginning to get impatient and not a little bored of the issue; the king and the prince had been arguing over this for an hour already. She opened her mouth to chivvy them along when Haldir shot her a warning glance. 

"_Do not_," he told her sternly. "_You must learn to wait; these people will not look kindly to your interruption. They are here to help us_."

She sighed and cracked another book from the pile she'd brought back from New York. This one was a tome in French from the 19th century, and its aged leaves were yellowed and crumbling at the edges. She found yet another illustration, a brass engraving this time, of the Cartouche of Weshem-ib, and the author had this to say about the works of the Bender of Reality:

_Deux âmes, deux pensées,_

_Deux efforts irréconciliées_

_Avec deux idéaux guerrants._

_Vérouillés dans un seul amour--_

_Trop pâle d'être Noir, et_

_Trop foncé d'être Blanc._

_Et encore, il est._

It was a poetic expression of how things impossible were made possible, thanks to Aker. Mere coincidence that the poem pertained to matters of love, of course—or was it?—but the words seemed to echo through Corinne's head… _vérouillés dans un seul amour… et encore, il est_. 

Even as she was sunk into these thoughts, the men were bickering over the details of how exactly they were going to go and sever the tie between she and Haldir, and Corinne found herself unaccountably panicked by the idea of not having his love when this was all over. What would she do without it, without him? _Et encore, il est_.

They never should have met, never should have had the opportunity to form a bond. She would have to learn to live a life without him, that's all, as she had lived her life prior to knowing him. Without, without. The word had never seemed so desolate before. _Et encore, il est_.

It was impossible, this love she felt for Haldir. Impossible, and doomed. Nothing could come of it. She was human,he was an elf, as foreign and exotic to her as anything possibly could be. She was mortal, and would die; he was immortal, and would live forever. She was plain, he was beautiful. He was a warrior, she was a scholar. _Et encore, il est_.

Corinne did not realize she had read the verse aloud until she finished speaking and realized there was dead silence around her. Then Tatharë handed her a square of linen, motioning for her to wipe her eyes, and she found she was crying. "Oh," she said stupidly, blinking, and allowed Haldir to take her away. 

No words were necessary; of course. He led her to his talan, to his bed, but did not undress them. Instead, he lay down and drew her beside him, curling his arm over her waist and directed her to look out the window, into the leaf-laden branches of the mellyrn around them. 

"_We must treasure the moments we have left_," he thought to her, nuzzling his nose against her neck just behind her ear. 

"_What if we don't want the tie between us to be severed?_" Her tentative question was fraught with all the fear and longing she felt. 

He sighed, chest expanding against her back, and did not answer right away. "You should allow your hair to grow," he said instead, twining a shoulder-length lock around his finger. 

"Your hair's long enough for both of us," she said, twisting to face him. "Don't change the subject."

He looked at her a long time, pewter gaze flicking over each feature as if cataloguing them. "I do not want our bond to be broken, either," he answered softly. "The idea hurts me like a sword-blow. But, at the same time, I cannot help but wonder if it is the Weshem-ib that puts these words on my tongue. I fear we will not know the truth until we can speak with Radagast."

"We have a few weeks left, at least," she murmured, snuggling deeper into his arms as if to hide from her desolation in his embrace. "Let's enjoy it while we can."

***

Day One 

They left at dawn. 

Elessar had finally relented and agreed to have ten of his men and ten of Haldir's accompany them, and so with a force of 32 altogether, they set out. Without really organizing anything officially, they tended to settle back into the usual pairings from when they were in the War—Gimli behind Legolas, Buffy and Haldir side-by-side (all the better to bicker with each other) Elessar and Boromir at the front, watching their perimeter with keen eyes. Rúmil and Tatharë were enrapt in each other's company, and Arwen and Dawn seemed to be enjoying a good gossip together, so that left Corinne and Orophin.

She didn't know much about him, save that he was Haldir's brother, and Celeborn's former student, so she figured he was fair game to question about issues she didn't understand from her lessons with the Silver Lord.

_Thank God for those riding lessons that her parents had forced on her_, she thought as she nudged her mount closer to Orophin with her knees, leaving her hands free to pull out a notebook and a pen. "So!" she said by way of greeting, startling him for a moment, "What was the deal with Fëanor? Talk about a guy with a bad attitude… what crawled up his ass and died?"

Orophin blinked at her, then looked to Haldir to assistance. His brother only laughed at him and turned back to his conversation with Buffy, so Orophin guessed he was on his own. "Um," he began uncertainly, "Fëanor was an elf with great passion…passion that overcame his wisdom."

"Do you think that respect for his immense talent blinded the others to his personality defects?" she asked him briskly, pen poised over the paper, ready to record his response.

"Um," he repeated, with a tinge of desperation this time. Another glance at Haldir, whose back was resolutely turned to them even though his shoulders were shaking with repressed mirth. 

"How else can you explain how the Noldor followed him in performing such reprehensible acts?" Corinne wanted to know. "If rebelling against the Valar wasn't enough, what about the kinslaying? Oh, and what hold did he have over his father and brothers, that they were always caving in to what he wanted? Seems to me that neither Finarfin and Fingolfin really wanted to come back to Arda but he talked them into it…" Here she paused and waited expectantly, eyes bright as a bird's as she looked to him for a response.

It had been four centuries since Orophin had studied with Celeborn, but under the barrage of her questions he found the mindset swiftly coming back to him, now that it would seem he had no choice. "I am of the opinion that the majority of the Nolder mistook his brilliance for wisdom, yes," he began, watching as she began to write. "After he created the Silmarils, he was considered a living legend—"

"Excuse me," Corinne interrupted. "Do you mind if we speak in Sindarin? I'd like to practice it."

"No, not at all," he replied faintly, and shot an evil look forward as Haldir let loose a guffaw. "Where was I?"

"Living legend," Corinne reminded him, and he nodded.

"Yes," Orophin continued in Sindarin, "he was considered a living legend…"

_three hours later_

"I don't believe it," Corinne stated flatly.

"No?" Orophin asked with a smile, used to her by now. "And why is that?"

"I find it hard to believe that items of such beauty, value, and power would be allowed to just languish wherever they were discarded," she explained. "I understand how the one with Maedhros would be hard to get your hands on—fiery pits aren't very navigable, after all But surely **someone** has retrieved the one that Maglor pitched into the sea?"

"That might well be," Orophin allowed. "Perhaps the Valar have retrieved it… it would not be beyond the scope of Ulmo's powers, nor of Ossë's, for that ma--."

"Enough!" Haldir said, slowing so they could catch up with him, and plucking Corinne from her mount to sit sideways before him. "You have been at this all day, and I weary of it." Her notebook and pen flew from her hands and she glared up at him until he captured her lips in a searing kiss. Predictably, she melted against him, and all those around them suddenly found fascinating things elsewhere to look at. 

"Mmph… Orphnmph, Hldr, stop," Corinne protested, dragging herself from him. "God, you are just too good at that. It's not decent. Orophin," she called to him, "Can you grab the stuff Haldir made me drop?"

"It is a pleasure to do your bidding, milady," Orophin told her gravely, and slid with careless grace down to the ground, nipping up the fallen things and stuffing them back into her saddlebags. 

"It's a pleasure to do my bidding," she told Haldir with a grin, and poked him in the chest. "How come you never say things like that to me?"

"Because my mouth is usually too busy **bringing **you pleasure to waste time saying the like," Haldir rumbled in her ear, making her shiver.

"Oh, yeah," she agreed breathlessly, thinking about that skillful mouth of his. "Are we going to have some privacy tonight?"

His faint smile was pure sin. "I will make sure of it."

***

Day Seven 

"Aye, lass, I'm delighted to teach you Khuzdul," Gimli said from his perch behind Legolas. "The first thing you must do is learn how to address me, as a dwarf of rank. Repeat after me, lass: '_Ezbadu men'_."

"_Ezbadu men_," Corinne repeated obediently, as Legolas rolled his eyes.

"Excellent," Gimli beamed, teeth glinting through his beard. "Next: how to greet someone. Repeat: '_Vemu ai-menu'_." When she had said it to his satisfaction, he nodded. "Very good. And now, a farewell. Repeat: '_Tan menu selek lanun naman'_." She repeated. "Now, here are some other phrases you would do well to learn. Repeat! '_Men gamaju'_."

"_Men gajamu_."

"Excellent! Repeat! '_Targ menu bundul gazaru'_."

"_Targ menu bundul gazaru_."__

"Superb. Repeat! '_Men eleneku menu o bepap opetu ezirak'_."

_"Men eleneku menu o bepap opetu ezirak."_

" Repeat! '_Ekespu menu men o targu men'_."

"_Ekespu menu men o targu men_."

"Perfect! Now, should you ever meet a dwarf, should you tell any of those things to him, I assure you he will be most delighted."

"I would say so," Legolas murmured. "You would count yourself lucky to escape a marriage proposal."

Corinne frowned at Gimli, who grinned unashamedly back at her. He was actually rather handsome, for a short guy with a huge beard. "Speaking of marriage, is there a Mrs. Gimli sitting at home darning your socks while Gimli Junior is playing with Gimliette?" To her surprise—but no one else's—he blushed bright pink and his hand hovered over his chest, as if guarding something kept there.

"Er—no," he answered at last. "Gimli son of Glóin suffers no ties. His heart is free and untamed!"

"His heart is bound by three golden hairs as tightly as chains of strongest steel," Legolas corrected gently. Gimli blushed harder, if possible, and turned his head away. "He is smitten by Galadriel," the elf explained. 

"Ooh," Corinne said on a sigh. "I thought courtly love was dead… that is so romantic, Gimli." He glanced shyly at her and ventured a smile. It was rather strange to see this fierce warrior embarrassed by his crush, but at the same time she felt deeply for him—she knew well what it was like to have a hopeless, doomed love. "You should write a song about it. There's nothing better than a rough soldier expressing tender emotions."

Gimli looked delighted at the idea. "I shall! And it will be in Khuzdul! _Gazardul menu ked gamelu pethem!" _

Corinne replied, "And _ekespu menu men o targu men, ezbadu men_ to you too!" Then she smiled proudly at her excellent pronunciation and inflection, though she had no idea what she'd said.

Two souls, two thoughts,

Two unreconciled strivings

With two warring ideals.

Locked in one love--

Too light to be Black, and

Too dark to be White.

And yet it is.

_Ezbadu men_ = exalted lord

_Vemu ai-menu_ = Greetings to you

_Tan menu selek lanun naman_ = May your forge burn bright.

_Men gajamu_ = I apologize.

_Targ menu bundul gazaru_ = Your beard speaks of your wisdom.

_Men eleneku menu o bepap opetu ezirak_ = You mean more to me than an endless vein of mithril.

_Ekespu menu men o targu men_ = You mean more to me than my beard.

_Gazardul menu ked gamelu pethem = _Your wisdom is as ancient as stone.


	16. Chapter 15

Without, Author's Note

10/28/03

Without chapter 15 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	17. Chapter 16

Without, Part 16

Corinne woke early the next morning, but Haldir was already up and gone. She dressed in comfortable low-riding sweatpants and a t-shirt, tucking the cartouche into her bra for lack of pockets. As it was obvious the cartouche could materialize on her whenever it wanted, they'd deemed it best to simply carry it around. That way, at least, it would be wrapped in its linen nest and not touching her skin.

She explored the cottage but he was nowhere inside. A shabby stone path from the front door wandered through a mélange of animal habitats and ramshackle garden plots, and she followed it. Here was a massive beehive, there a stand of bean plants crawling haphazardly up some rickety poles ten feet high. Uneven rows of lettuce were thriving as they wove between and around gopher holes whose occupants poked their heads up to peruse Corinne as she walked by. 

Most obvious of all were the cages. There were cages everywhere, of all sizes and shapes—some short and squat, some tall and slender, some tiny enough to only contain a sole petite creature, and some large enough to hold multiple elephants. All had a single thing in common, however: not a door was to be seen on any single one of them, and the animals who made them their homes wandered freely in and out. 

Wide-eyed, Corinne walked the path until it petered out, and then strained until she heard faint voices. Following them, she came to a small clearing, paved with a primitive mosaic floor depicting two trees—one of green and silver, the other of gold and green. The wizard had rolled up the voluminous sleeves of his rusty tunic and was industriously swabbing out a rabbit hutch at the edge of the mosaic while Haldir leant against a tree and 'supervised'. The early sun peeping over the treetops lit his head like burnished gold, throwing his face into shadow, but there was no quelling the brilliance of his eyes, both fierce and soft as they fastened on her. "_Doll-nîn_," he said quietly, a faint smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

"Morning, baby," she said, going to him and sliding her arms around his waist. "Been explaining our problem?"

He nodded, and dropped a kiss on the crown of her ruddy head. "I have told him all I know, and all Dawn has told us; is there anything you would add?"

She gave his mind a quick search to learn what he'd said to Radagast and found he'd been pretty comprehensive. "Not really," she replied. "All you've left out is…" she paused, biting her lip. Haldir hadn't mentioned their conversation before they'd left Lothlórien, about how they were beginning to doubt they wanted to sever their bond. "Is how we might not want to end it," she finished. "But then again, that might just be the cartouche talking. Trying to keep us from breaking up and ending the steady influx of energy we're sending it."

Once again a strong feeling of both resentment for the cartouche's interference, as well as disbelief that her emotions could somehow be artificial, welled up in her so powerfully that she knew it had spilled over into Haldir's mind, for she felt his answering emotions of agreement and love brush comfortingly back against her.

"_I don't want to lose this_," she thought to him with a tinge of desperation.

Radagast moved to a massive birdcage that stood well over twice the height of a Man. Like the hutch, it too had no doors or any other method of restraining its inhabitants, what seemed to be an entire flock of large golden birds. They were snuggled up four to a perch, heads under wings as they slept, and didn't move a feather as he swept (and chiseled, where necessary) their droppings and refilled vast basins of food and water.

"If there's no doors on the cages, aren't you afraid the animals will escape?" she asked, curious.

He straightened from scooping the detritus into a pan for disposal, and turned slowly to face her. His black eyes studied her a long moment, making her somewhat uncomfortable, before he smiled. "I have no need of doors," he replied at last, cocking his head to one side. "Nor do you."

Corinne frowned in confusion as he took up his sack of animal poop and began to amble back toward the house. "Wait!" she called, jogging after him. Haldir followed at a more leisurely and dignified pace. "What about the cartouche? What can you tell us about it?"

Radagast stowed the sack beside a disreputable-looking wooden table leaning heavily against the cottage's wall. It had several mysterious dents and scorch-marks on its surface, and she was positive at least one of the stains was blood. "Let me see it," he said, and held out his hand. Corinne dug it out of her bra and handed it to him. 

"You might not want to—" she began as he unwrapped it "—touch it," she finished lamely as he plucked it from the linen with his bare fingers and held it up to the sunlight. It glittered off Aker's two manes, highlighting his four tiny fangs exposed by the open, roaring mouths. Between his heads, the flat disc of the sun seemed to shine as brightly as the original overhead. 

Radagast tapped the sun-disc with a dirt-encrusted nail. "So, you think this is the point of Aker's mischief, do you? He wants to obscure the sun?"

Corinne blinked. "What else could it be? We couldn't think of anything else that he could do, or that he'd need such a big chunk of life-force to accomplish…"

"Can you not?" His voice was low and amused. "Think harder. Think… of things both greater, and lesser."

She let out a whimper and clutched her hands to her head. "You're making my brain hurt." The wizard sighed, and went back in the house. "Hey!" she yelled, stomping after him. "If you wouldn't speak in riddles, I'd understand whatever the hell it is you're trying to say!"

She followed Radagast into a sitting room across from the dining chamber. In it was a semi-circle of chairs pulled round the crackling fireplace. Also in it were Legolas and Buffy, seated somewhat stiffly in two of those chairs, while a third was occupied by an elf that was nothing short of magnificent.

"Woof," Corinne said, skidding to a stop so suddenly that Haldir bumped into her from behind. A flash of displeasure and jealousy from Haldir burst into her mind, but she shook it away. The newcomer turned his head on a long, tanned neck to survey her with eyes of piercing, brilliant green, and Corinne felt distinctly light-headed as he studied her with a lazy, knowing arrogance that took her breath away. 

"This," Legolas began in a strained voice, "is my father, Thranduil, King of Mirkwood."

Corinne's gaze dropped from the flawless contours of his face to the rest of him. He wore a sleeveless tunic, and arm-bands of elaborately wrought gold clasped his considerable biceps. His trousers did not in any way disguise the bulges of muscle that ran the length of his legs, and the belt that clasped his trim waist seemed only to draw attention to the area beneath it…

Dragging her gaze from him, she managed to say, "This is your **father**?" Her brain seemed to be stuck on 'incredulity'; he looked like no father she'd ever seen in her life. But the **begetting** of a child… oh, that she could imagine without any effort whatsoever. 

Beside her, Haldir read her thoughts and growled. He nodded shortly to the newcomer, who nodded back with languid unconcern. "When did you arrive?"

"Just minutes ago," Thranduil replied easily. "One of Radagast's accursed birds notified him of my approach, and he made sure my son and… daughter were awaiting me." The pause he gave before speaking the word _daughter_ was barely perceptible, unless you were another elf or a Slayer, in which case it was completely noticeable and more than a little insulting. Nevertheless, Buffy's determinedly cheerful smile did not waver, though her grip on Legolas' hand tightened.

_His voice was like a violin_, Corinne thought absently as she watched his pink, perfectly sculpted lips move; throbbing and sweet and low, and all at the same time. What would it sound like moaning a woman's name in passion? As the thought spurred yet another naughty mind-picture, Haldir growled louder.

Radagast looked up from where he was setting a kettle of water on the hook over the fire and grinned. "There's a cock amongst the hens," he commented slyly. "But where **are** the other chickens?"

As if on cue, Tatharë, Dawn, and Arwen appeared in the doorway. The elleths were better at hiding their reaction to Thranduil, but Dawn goggled shamelessly. 

"Who's this tasty little crumpet?" she asked, staring appreciatively even as Boromir could be heard muttering unhappily in the hall.

"Legolas' father," Corinne explained in a whisper. 

"Apple didn't fall far from the tree," Dawn commented, eyeing Thranduil avidly. "And whatta tree…are you single?"

"It does not matter if **he** is single," Boromir said, tugging on her hand, "because **you** most certainly are **not**." She grumbled, but allowed him to pull her out of the room again.

"**I'm** single," Corinne said immediately, and smiled at Thranduil. He smiled back, a slow smile that spoke of tangled sheets and passionate whispers in the dark, and she groped for a wall to lean against. Haldir growled again. 

"Your majesty," Tatharë breathed, sinking into a low curtsey before him.

"Tatharë," Thranduil addressed the elleth, surveying her from the humble chair as if it were a throne of mithril and gems, "ever is thy sight a joy." 

"You honour me, my lord," she replied faintly, a very pretty flush creeping up her throat. Now it was Rúmil who was growling.

"Not at all," the king demurred smoothly before turning his attention to Arwen, and something flickered in the emerald depths of his eyes.  "Undómiel," he said, standing. "A star truly shines on the moment of our meeting."

"We are well met, my lord," she said with perfect composure, but there was no disguising the faint tremor of her hand when Thranduil lifted it to his lips, golden hair swinging forward to frame his face and brush her skin. Every female in the room sighed, and it was like a storm gusting through the cottage.

Legolas made a noise of deep disgust and strode from the room, pushing roughly by Elessar as he was entering. 

"I'll just… go talk to him," Buffy said haltingly, seeming almost unable to drag her gaze from Thranduil but managing with a mighty effort. 

The kettle gave a piercing whistle. Radagast pulled it from the fire and there was silence once more as Elessar's keen eyes took in the scene before him; Thranduil still held Arwen's hand and even now watched the other king with a heavy-lidded gaze that was half amusement, half challenge as he sat once more.

Elessar told Arwen he needed to speak with her, **privately**, in a completely unconvincing show of ownership that only made her glare daggers at him as she followed him from the room, and Rúmil was also quick to request Tatharë's presence elsewhere. When the room was emptied of all save Radagast, Thranduil, Corinne (still watching him closely) and Haldir (still frowning fiercely), the wizard emitted a laugh that was almost a cackle.

"Your penchant for causing trouble almost makes me like you, Oropherion," he told the Silvan king. "Almost." He poured them all cups of tea, but made no move to actually hand them out. "May I assume you are here to see your son? For if you are here to beg my intervention of behalf of your realm, my answer remains as it ever was."

"I still doubt I could fit the entire forest there, Radagast," Thranduil murmured, leaning forward to take a cup in his long, lean fingers before slouching back in a posture of negligent ease that made Corinne sigh before she could catch herself. "Surely you could learn a new insult after all these years?"

"Why bother?" the wizard asked swiftly. "The old one yet suits so perfectly." He drained his cup of tea and set it with a thump down on the scarred table. "Go and talk to your son, or go make eyes at the she-elf again, I care not. But there are things I must discuss with these two that are none of your concern."

Thranduil stood, utterly unperturbed by Radagast's scarcely hidden hostility, and nodded to Corinne and Haldir as he left. She could feel the wordless fury in her lover's mind, and wondered at it—surely he couldn't be **that** jealous, could he?

"_I am not_," he thought to her. _"I have never liked Thranduil, and even less now."_ Before she had time to learn more, however, Radagast was speaking.

"Still you have not figured out my riddle, although with Thranduil's arrival, I am not surprised you would be… distracted. Ever are the ladies enchanted by him." His tone indicated his poor opinion of those who would be fooled by such a flimsy thing as appearance. Easy enough for a shape-shifter to think, Corinne felt. "But now we must talk of more serious things."

He poured another cup of tea and drank, even though its great heat must have scalded his mouth, and reached into his tunic for the cartouche, which he placed on the table among the teacups. "Aker does not concern himself with the sun these days; but yet he is the keeper of the gate, and would prevent those who travel from reaching the far shore." He surveyed her from under bushy brows. "East to west, young one. Who travels from east to west in this world?"

Haldir stiffened beside her as realization dawned, horrible and sharp, within them both. "He means to cut off the Straight Path to Valinor for the elves," he murmured, setting his cup down hard so it rattled on the table.

At the wizard's nod, Corinne frowned. "But why? If he's got plans to take over Middle-Earth, wouldn't having more elves here hinder him? It would just mean more to fight him. I mean, the most powerful elves of this age are still here… Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond, Glorfindel…"

"Indeed it would." Radagast fell silent and slouched back in his chair, threading his fingers together over his belly and staring out the window. "If," he continued, "that were his plan. But I fear his desires are somewhat more… ambitious than merely ruling Arda."

"You cannot mean…" Haldir began, but could not seem to finish his sentence. His grasp on Corinne's hand tightened until she was in pain, but still she said nothing. 

"Yes," Radagast confirmed. "Not Arda, but Aman itself. Yavanna has made her fear of this plain to me. By keeping on Arda these elves you have mentioned, his conquest of Aman would be much simpler."

"How can this be possible?" Haldir's voice was almost shaking. "How can he dare to attack the Valar themselves?"

"He dares because of you," Radagast said plainly, and Haldir jerked back as if slapped. "Because of the force he drains from you, and you." He nodded to Corinne, who shrank back in her chair, aghast at her role in this whole debacle. "Tell me, have you joined?"

"Not entirely," Corinne answered for them, as Haldir was staring at the wall, his jaw clenched, a muscle leaping in his lean cheek as he struggled to contain himself. "Galadriel told us not to."

Radagast nodded again. "Wise," he said. "But then, she always was." He paused. "Except for that bit about following Fëanor, but I digress…yes, I am glad, it will make it easier for me to sever your bond."

"You can do that?" She tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest, mirrored in Haldir, she knew, and vying only with his despair for Aker's designs on Valinor for painfulness. "How? And when?"

"'Twill be an easy matter," the Maia replied, standing and gathering up the cups. "Only a matter of draining the cartouche, of ridding it of all the blood used to purchase its powers over the years. Releasing the blood will remove the centuries of power Aker has drained. As for when…" he plunked the cups into a basin and pumped some water over them, then took up a rag and began to wash them with vigour. "I could do it now, this moment, but I suspect neither of you are prepared for such an event."

He threw them a glance over his shoulder, mustache twitching in what could, quite loosely, be termed sympathy. "You should go now," he suggested, not unkindly. "Go, and enjoy what time you have left. Tell me when you are ready. I will be here." He smiled a little. "I am always here."

_doll-nîn_ = my dusky one

Oropherion = son of Oropher, Thranduil's father

Arda = another name for Middle-Earth

Aman = another name for Valinor

Yavanna = Valar/goddess of plants and animals; Radagast is her particular servant.


	18. Chapter 17

Author's Note: This chapter dedicated to Khylaren, who let us know about some faboo fanart of Haldir, mmm mmm good. 

Without, Part 17

Legolas stood in the garden, right in the middle of the mosaic of the trees, eyes closed as he extended his senses. The sounds of his home—wind murmuring through branches, animals scurrying along, and the trees themselves whispering faintly, so faintly—threatened to overwhelm him. He felt guilt, for being away so long; delight, at having returned; familiarity, so comforting, like a warm embrace. 

Mostly, though, he wanted to leave again. To ride out on a fast horse, eyes resolutely ahead, and return to Sérevinya where he had made a new home with his beloved Dagnir. In his mind's eye Legolas could easily picture the large chair in which she would insist on curling up beside him, though they barely fit in it together. 

He saw the firelight crackling on the hearth, and the faded rug where Mercas would play when Dawn and Boromir brought him for a visit. Of an evening, Legolas would often bring out a whittling knife and carve a toy for the child, and delight in the gummy smile he would receive as pudgy fingers explored the bear, or Oliphant, or horse his uncle had just gifted him with.

Comfortable days he had spent there, where he lived freely, and not under the capricious rule and greedy whim of Thranduil. He **loved** his sire; he had been a stern but caring father, but as often happens when the child becomes an adult and sees a parent with eyes unclouded by adoration and awe, Legolas did not **like** Thranduil very much. 

For Mirkwood's king was devious; he was sly and complicated and never would one know where truly he stood on any issue. Legolas found it frustrating, and as the years passed, he was unable to long endure his father's machinations. Thranduil seemed to delight in keeping others off-balance, even his own offspring, and his youngest son was no longer willing to play such games. 

When the need to admit their loss of Gollum from Mirkwood's dungeons had presented itself, Legolas had leapt at the chance to serve as messenger, knowing it would afford him at least a month's respite from Thranduil's court. Little had he known that it would be not a month, but years before he would again clap eyes on his father, and as his sensitive ears picked up on the sounds of feet—one pair human, the other elven and almost as familiar as his own—he sighed, knowing his solitude at an end.

His wife slipped her arms around his waist and he gratefully gathered her into his embrace; she was his fortitude, more than she knew. "I'll be nice if it kills me," she promised him, and he smiled almost against his will. 

"It might," he replied, gazing down into her face. "We are fortunate you can choose whether you remain dead."

"If he's too irritating, I might not decide to come back," Buffy said ominously. "Did you see the way he was scoping out Arwen? I mean, yeah, she's the most beautiful creature on the planet but still, lecherous much?"

Legolas sighed. "It had nothing to do with lechery, _herves-nîn_," he told her, "and everything  to do with challenging the authority of another king, another male. Can you think of a better way to rile a newly-crowned monarch, and newly-wed Man, than by seducing his wife?"

"Indeed," commented a silk-velvet voice, and Thranduil himself stepped onto the mosaic floor. "Ever have you had a talent for analyzing my conduct, _ionath-nîn_. And ever has it pained me that you take no joy in it, for it is a pleasure that few may experience." He smirked, and Legolas could feel the tiny tremor that shook Buffy at the sight. "It is reserved for those few of us with royal blood."

Legolas gave a snort that, if it had been words, would have said "royal blood, my elven fanny". "What do you wish to say to us, Father?" he asked, forcing a note of politeness that he certainly did not feel into his tone. "For I cannot imagine you are well pleased with my choice of mate."

Thranduil's gaze, as green as the leaves he'd named his son for, flicked over Buffy. "On the contrary," he said, surprising them both, "if you had to marry a daughter of Man, Dagnir seems to be a fine choice." He smiled at her, a real smile, and this time her breath caught hard in her chest. "I have heard much of you, of your exploits in Lindon as well as your role during the war." 

Buffy smiled. So trusting, she was… Legolas knew his wife was being lulled by his father's similarity to himself, knew she was thinking something like, "he wasn't so bad, after all… just a little daunting, because of the gorgeousness and being king and all"...

"I have also," Thranduil continued, "heard you sacrificed your boon to return life to him. For that, you have my gratitude and devotion, eternally."

Legolas frowned; he knew perfectly well it was one of Elrond's sons who had told his father of that, and vowed to beat them severely when next he saw them—even the other one, for he knew that when one twin was guilty, the other usually was, as well. _Accursed peredhil._

Buffy, however, was amazed at the depth of emotion evident in Thranduil's words; this was an elf who truly, genuinely loved his son, no matter how the son seemed firm about distancing himself. As she loved his son too, she couldn't really blame him, and her determination to get her father-in-law to like her was redoubled.

"My pleasure," she replied, staring shyly down at her feet before daring to peep up at him through her lashes. "Are you really angry about Legolas not marrying an elleth?"

"Yes," he replied calmly. "I'm quite furious, and took an axe to every stick of furniture in my bedroom when I was informed he had wed you. But my fury changes nothing, so best not to dwell upon it, would you not agree?"

"Um, yeah," Buffy said, trying to get a grip on how to deal with him. One minute he was sweet, the next a total creep. "Can you please pick a personality and stick with it? Because I'm getting really confused."

"Then my work here is finished," Thranduil purred, and turned to go back to the cottage. At the edge of the clearing, however, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. "Greenleaf, if you decide you will speak to me again today, please come find me in my chambers. I will await you there." There was the merest whisper of tree branches shifting as he slipped between them, immediately disappearing into their midst.

"No wonder you didn't want to come back," Buffy said with some awe, turning to face her husband. "I don't care how pretty he is. Will we have to spend much time with him? Because if so, I'm gonna go insane! A danger to myself and others within three days, I swear."

Legolas only curled his arm around his wife and pressed her face to his chest, sighing against her hair. "I hope not, Dagnir. I hope not." More footsteps sounded in the distance: one elven, one human, and not the familiar tread of Boromir, Dawn, or Elessar. "Corinne and Haldir come."

Haldir preceded Corinne into the clearing, his face grim as he tugged her after him and tried to keep her from bumping into things as she wasn't looking at all where she was walking, but had craned her head around on her neck to scrutinize the path whence they'd come. 

"Your father," she told Legolas once she was facing forward again, "is the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life. But he's a cold bastard, isn't he?" At his surprised nod, she continued. "Ruins it for me." And she tucked her arm through Haldir's and grinned up at him. "I like my men pissy, but not cold."

Relaxing a fraction, Haldir smirked down at her. "And how do you prefer your elves?"

She didn't give a sarcastic answer, as the others expected, but began to cry. "I prefer my elves to be you," Corinne sobbed. "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," she whispered over and over against his shoulder. 

Buffy frowned. "What did Radagast say?"

Haldir explained; they were just as horrified as he'd expected them to be. "We must discuss this with the others at once," Legolas exclaimed, and they trooped inside to fetch everyone. They gathered once more in the dining room—even Thranduil, who insisted in his lazy way that he be included in the briefing— and since the group did not include Haldir's archers or Elessar's soldiers, the room didn't have to expand too much to hold everyone. With cups of fragrant tea steaming on the table before them, the questions began.

"How is it you know all this stuff?" Dawn blurted first. 

"How is it you've been here over a year and still do not fathom how matters are different here from your home?" Radagast countered. Boromir bristled at his hostile tone toward his wife. "Istari are not common; we do not roam over hill and dale just waiting for Iluvatar's children to get themselves into scrapes so we can save them." He frowned. "This is what comes of Olórin's conduct... always too familiar with the children, always intervening… accursed wizard!"

"What in the hell is he ranting about?" Corinne asked Haldir out of the corner of her mouth, eyes never leaving Radagast's face even as she groped blindly for her notebook and pen to record his words. 

_"__Olórin is the name of Gandalf in Quenya_," the elf explained to her in thought. Aloud, he said, "Radagast, be you calm, and do not start once more to rail against Gandalf; he is not our concern at the moment. I ask you, as does Dawn: how do you come to know the answers to our questions?"

The wizard's eyes travelled from the march-warden's face above, and beyond, to the various baskets and bowls covering the shelf running the perimeter of the room. A faint mew told Corinne he was watching the progress of one of the kittens. "Olórin's presence in the world of Man and Elf has allowed those people to think we Istari are naught more than your nursemaids." 

"We are not here to serve you; we are gods in our own right, and serve only those whose might is greater than our own. I follow Yavanna Kementári, Queen of the Earth. What little I do not ken of my own, she tells me." He raked his gaze over each person at the table in turn. "Is that a sufficient reply?"

Dawn gulped and nodded. Buffy piped up with a question of her own. "You seem to be pretty cranky; why should we believe what you say?"

Radagast startled them by grinning suddenly. "Come now, children. I have been given Olórin's approval. Surely you would trust that?" He gazed around the table; not one of the group looked remotely trusting of him. He grinned wider. "Excellent. It would seem you have finally learned… and it only took an age…" He glanced at Haldir and Thranduil, the two eldest elves in the party. "Or two."

A dozen glowers were directed at him. He merely quirked a bushy brow. "Do you have a choice, but to trust me?" They did not, and they knew it. "Now, then. The matter of the cartouche." All eyes dropped to survey it as it lay on the table. "It was created in another world, meant to drain the energy of those with greed in their hearts. No, I pray you," he said tiredly, turning to Corinne, who'd begun to tear up once more, "do not cry again, for I did not mean you."

She sniffled, but maintained her composure, and he continued. "It would seem that the forces of evil from this other world wish to close off the Straight Path, by which the Eldar make their way to Valinor. In this way, they seek to weaken their adversaries, the Valar, by preventing the Eldar from sailing West and coming to the aid of their gods, families, friends." He surveyed the faces around him. "We cannot allow this to happen."

"What must we do?" Elessar inquired. "For while there is still breath in this mortal body, I shall not allow it to pass." Boromir frowned at this, but said nothing. Legolas knew the Man thought of the implications for his beloved Gondor should the king, so newly crowned, fail to return from this mission. 

"We must destroy the cartouche," Haldir said, his voice quiet but firm even as a mental wail of anguish coursed from Corinne. "No more will I allow this foul being to use me against the Valar."

Radagast nodded in recognition of the elf's words. "But destroying the cartouche is only the first of our tasks, I fear."

"We have to lay the smackdown on Aker himself, don't we?" Dawn ventured. "Even if we get rid of the cartouche, he might still have enough power to carry out his plan."

"Dearly I love this idea," stated Gimli. "And dearly do I wish to begin. But how do you propose, O Wise Istari," he added, a touch of sarcasm in his gravelly voice, "that we engage a god from another world in battle? Will he fall to my axe-blow? For somehow I doubt this."

"Ooh, good point, Gimli!" Buffy said, beaming at him and patting his arm fondly. "Gimli has a **very** good, excellent point, Radagast," she informed the wizard. "I don't have a troll hammer this time. And how are we going to get our grubby little hands on Aker in the first place?" An idea seemed to come to her then, one she didn't like. At all. "You're not thinking to bleed Dawn to make a portal, are you?"

"Well, actually, yes," Radagast answered, to his credit only flinching a little when the small woman began shouting. He flicked a glance at her husband, who tugged on her arm until she was seated in his lap, red-faced, as he stroked her hair and spoke soothingly into her ear. 

"Buffy, it's ok," Dawn tried to assure her sister. "I've been thinking about it a lot… I'm ok with being the Key, with opening portals. It's what I am, after all… it's like those shutters, you know?"

Buffy ceased her disgruntled mumbling to join the others in staring at Dawn. "I think I speak for everyone here when I say, 'huh?' "

"You know, the shutters. Houses with fake shutters… they're there to decorate, but they don't actually close and protect the windows. They're like… a mockery of genuine shutters. I've always disliked them." The Arda people had no idea whatsoever of what she spoke; only Buffy and Corinne were watching her with anything remotely resembling comprehension. "If I didn't use my Key-ness, if I just led a normal life and did nothing with my abilities, I'd be just as bad as those stupid shutters." 

Buffy shook her head. "It's not the same thing, Dawnie…"

"What's not the same thing," Corinne interrupted, her gaze never wavering from Dawn, "is that you're having a reaction about being used that comes from your own experiences and emotions. And you're projecting them onto your sister, and not listening to what she's saying."

The Slayer gasped in fury, opening her mouth to retaliate, when Dawn spoke. "She's right, Buffy." She took a deep breath. "I was created from you, but I'm **not** you. I know how you hated being treated like property by the Watchers Council, and then the Valar playing games with your life, but… I was made to be used." She fell silent, obviously choosing her next words with care. "I feel empty unless I'm being used. It's my purpose, my fate. No matter how I love Boromir and Mercas—" she reached for her husband's hand, clasping it tightly— "refusing my powers instead of employing them leaves me feeling hollow."

"You're going to do this whether I want you to or not, aren't you?" Buffy asked flatly. Dawn nodded. "Even if I ask you to consider how dangerous it will be? How it could leave Boromir without a wife, and Mercas without a mother?" Another nod, though given slower this time. At her response, Buffy just turned her face into Legolas' neck and sighed as Elessar's hand came to rest on her shoulder in silent support.

"When, then?" came her garbled question.

"In a sen'night," Radagast announced, but Corinne surprised them all by shaking her head. 

"No," she said clearly. "I can't take this for so long. The dread of ending it has been like a knife in my stomach this entire trip; I can't take any more. I need it to be sooner. Like tomorrow."

"We will need time to prepare and pack our supplies," Elessar reminded her, frowning even as he continued his idle stroking of Buffy's arm, obviously concerned for his friend. Corinne slumped in her seat, feeling defeated. 

"Enough of that," Haldir snapped. "Your ability to pity yourself is truly astounding, _doll-nîn_. I know you to be stronger than this; do not disappoint me." Corinne stared at him in shock, unable to decide whether to be angry or hurt, and Radagast sighed in disgust as her eyes filled with tears yet again.

Thranduil had been silent during the proceedings up; now, he spoke. "You tried to force Dagnir to face the truth," he said in his cool silken tones on the far side of the table. "A clumsy attempt, to be sure, but effective. Haldir now attempts the same with you. Will you reject his lesson, or accept it as Dagnir has accepted hers?" He paused a moment to let his words sink in, emerald gaze glittering as it flicked negligently over her. "Dawn's fate is as a Key. Shall yours be that of hypocrite?"

Corinne's pout, which had just started to form, fell abruptly off her face. "Well, damn," she muttered, reluctantly admiring his artful and effortless manipulation of her. "Wouldn't want to be a hypocrite, would I?"

"Indeed not," he returned, a smile teasing the corners of his sensuous mouth. "There is naught worse."

And Legolas snorted in disbelief, rolling his eyes in a manner much closer to that of his wife than of the high and haughty elf-kind of Mirkwood.

_peredhil_ = half-elves

_herves-nîn_ = my wife

_ionath-nîn_ = my son

_doll-nîn_ = my dusky one


	19. Chapter 18

Without, Author's Note

10/28/03

Without chapter 18 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	20. Chapter 19

Author's Note: Driving home from work today, I had what is quite possibly the most brilliant idea ever for a story. Then, of course, some dickhead cut me off and I got so caught up in flipping him off that I promptly forgot what it was. So you'll have to settle for this. Heh.

Without, Part 19

Corinne groaned. She was lying in an untidy heap, her shoulder twisted painfully under her, face pressed to the ground. "Ow." She pushed up to a sitting position, then wished she hadn't as pain flared inside her skull. "Ow," she repeated, lifting a hand to cup her head, hoping it would make the ache go away. It didn't. 

Blinking, she looked around. From the way her voice had echoed, she was somewhere big… and dark. Very, very dark. She shivered and rubbed her arms. Cold, too. She ran her fingertips over the floor. It was smooth and cool; some sort of stone. Her mind raced as she tried desperately to remember what had happened. The last she remembered was falling asleep in that light-cocoon thingy Radagast had created…

"Buffy?" she called softly. "Dawn? Boromir? Legolas?" There was no answer from any of them, and after her voice finished echoing, silence reigned once more. "Haldir?" she ventured in a whisper, fighting to keep from crying when she reached out with her mind and, for the first time in a month, found only herself. 

Pure terror flooded her being at the sensation of utter solitude and aloneness, threatening to overwhelm her, and she very nearly caved in to the impulse to curl back up on the floor and sob. _No_, she thought fiercely, _no more crying, dammit_. Standing, she began to take baby-steps forward, hands before her to keep from bumping into anything. 

She was just beginning to think she was in some sort of empty cavern when, to her great surprise, her left hand encountered something soft and round. Giving it an experimental squeeze, she gasped in shock and leapt back about ten feet when a husky chuckle sounded in the darkness, making the thing in her hand vibrate slightly. 

"Shall we not introduce ourselves first?" asked a warm alto voice, and a flame flickered to life in front of Corinne, illuminating a woman standing calmly before her. Her body, tall and slender, was displayed rather than covered in a sarong of supple white fabric, and a leopard skin draped over her shoulder to fasten, paw in mouth, at her hip. Skin the colour of honey was revealed in slim arms and long calves, and hair like jet fell in a glossy sheet to her waist. Chunky golden jewellery adorned every limb and wound sinuously around her throat, clinking richly with each movement.

One hand was held out before her, and in it a tongue of flame danced an inch above her palm. Her forehead seemed to be sparkling somehow, and Corinne squinted in the dim light, gasping when she realized that there were, imbedded in the centre of the woman's brow, was a seven-petalled lotus that appeared to be made of some glittering stone. 

"You are Corinne," the woman said, smiling. "I am Seshat."

 "Goddess of learning, of writing and reading and…" Corinne muttered to herself, her words trailed off as her knees wobbled and she sat down, hard, on the ground. "Holy crap."

"In my library, there is none," Seshat replied, eyes twinkling like obsidian. "Not holy, nor profane." She closed her fist over the flame but instead of the space around them darkening further, light flooded the space and Corinne was blinking in the suddenly-bright chamber, breath wooshing out in a rush to see that they were surrounded by row after row after row of bookshelves, at least twenty feet tall and extending as far as the eye could see in every direction from the central point at which she and the goddess stood, like spokes of a wheel. 

The bookcases did not, however, only contain books. There were the standard codices, of course, but also baskets brimming with scrolls of both papyrus and vellum vying for place with various instruments like sextants and compasses and globes and models of the solar system and… 

Seshat's enchanting laughter rang out again and drew Corinne's attention from where she'd been gazing avidly around her. Blushing faintly, she turned to attend the goddess. Seshat glided over to a tall loutrophoros that held a fat bouquet of date fronds, and plucked one from the bunch. "You are welcome here," she said, her voice resonating like a musical note, and Corinne found herself accepting the branch with reverence.

"Thank you," she managed, staring down at it. It symbolized, in hieroglyphics, the concept of years, the passage of a great amount of time. _What in the hell is that supposed to mean? she wondered, looking back up at Seshat._

"If you wish to know something, you have only to ask. I will either tell you, or not, but you gain nothing with your silence," Seshat admonished gently. "It is not the way of a scholar to bite her tongue."

"What happened?" Corinne blurted. "Where are the others? Is Haldir alright? Did the cartouche break? Is our bond severed now? Why am I here?"

"One question at a time, if you please," Seshat laughed, and extended a hand in greeting. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and her skin was warm and soft. Which reminded her… 

"Sorry about groping you before," Corinne said, abashed gaze turned downward.

"I did not mind," Seshat replied lightly. "It has been many a long year since I have been touched by a mortal being."

Well, that was slightly weird. Corinne decided to ignore it and focus on the questions she needed answered. "Did the cartouche break?"

"Yes." Seshat's dark eyes were calm and, looking into them, Corinne could see great peace and clarity. 

"Does that mean we're no longer bonded?"

"The cartouche is broken," Seshat repeated with great serenity

Apparently, there was a limit to the information the goddess was willing to part with. Corinne sighed, and tried another tack. "Is Haldir safe?"

"Safe, yes."

"I sense a 'but' coming up…" Corinne prompted, and the goddess smiled.

"He is safe," she said again. 

"Where am I?" One more she couldn't resist looking around, admiring the carved limestone pillars, the inlaid marble floor, and the massive amount of knowledge available for the taking… dragging her attention from its siren-call, she forced herself to listen to Seshat's response.

"You are in my library, on Iw-n-sisi," the goddess explained, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet and making Corinne notice her sandals. They had lotuses on the strap and reminded her strongly of Buffy and her stupid daisy-shoes, and she was surprised at how much she missed the other woman in that moment.

Then she realized what Seshat had just told her. "Iw-n-sisi?" she demanded, incredulous. "I'm on the Isle of Fire?" The Isle of Fire was the place that ancient Egyptians believed their souls explored and endured en route to being reborn. "But… but…that's impossible."

"Many things are so," Seshat agreed. "And yet, you are here." She gave an elegant shrug of narrow sienna shoulders, looking supremely unconcerned with such matters of reality and logic. "Have you forgotten the nature of Aker so quickly?"

"Bender of Reality," Corinne muttered, and Seshat nodded. 

"Quite so."

Corinne, still on the floor, leaned back on stiff arms and crossed her ankles casually, belying her great distress. "So, why am I here? I'm guessing this isn't just a meet-and-greet you happen to give all the history geeks like me."

"As one who studies, who reveres books and learning, you are one of my own," Seshat said slowly. "I am given the opportunity to offer you a choice."

"A choice," Corinne repeated flatly. "Between which rock and which hard place?"

The goddess smiled brightly. "Clever," she commented. "You are clever, and would be a fine addition to my court. Will you join me?"

"What does it mean if I do?" Corinne wanted to know, trying desperately to play it cool while her insides writhed in anxiety and excitement. "What would that make me?"

"One of my priestesses, and your success would be without measure."

"What does that mean? Exactly?"

"It means," Seshat explained, "that you will return to your world as if you never heard of the Weshem-ib. Your life will progress normally, and you will experience unlimited joy and progress."

Corinne's heart leapt to her throat at the idea of having everything back to normal, and then some, before her New York-tuned twin senses of suspicion and skepticism kicked in. "And is this in exchange for my soul, or something?" 

Seshat threw back her head, making her hair cascade past her hips, and laughed. "Indeed not," she replied. "What use would I have for a soulless being? No, it simply means that after your death, you return to me here, in my library, and spend eternity as my servant."

"Servant?" Corinne imitated Haldir in quirking a brow. "I don't do windows."

The goddess sobered at that. "Have you not noticed, child? There are no windows here." She gestured around them; the aisles and aisles of books seemed to go on in a world-without-end-amen kind of way that made Corinne suddenly nervous. 

"Ah," she managed to say. "What would that mean for the people of Arda?"

Seshat's sloe eyes blinked at her, lashes like dark fans fluttering. "Life would progress for them as if they had no knowledge of the cartouche or its origins.."

"Aker would proceed with his plans, and no one on Arda would be the wiser," Corinne filled in, and Seshat nodded. "So what you're telling me," she continued, give the palm frond an airy wave for emphasis, "is if I take you up on this offer that fulfills my every dream, I'm basically screwing all of Middle-Earth without the benefit of an adequate lubricant?"

Seshat's lovely mouth quirked in amusement. "Yes."

Corinne sighed. "And if I decline?"

"If you decline, I must evict you from this place to make your way on Iw-n-sisi, alone. You may try to find Ta-tenen," she tilted her head to the side, her gaze kind, "but I fear you would not last long, child. The road is long and inhospitable, fraught with dangers the likes of which you have never experienced nor surmounted."

Corinne considered it a long moment, then stood and absently brushed off her backside. "I'm kind of getting used to danger-fraught roads," she said thoughtfully, meeting Seshat's eyes. "And, dangerous and inhospitable? Babe, I'm from New York. Dangerous and inhospitable is all in a day's work for me. I'm gonna have to give it a pass. But thanks for thinking of me."

She tried to hand the palm frond back to Seshat, but the goddess stepped back. "If I cannot have you for servant and companion, please accept that as my gift to you."

Corinne wasn't sure what she'd meant by that, but nodded in gratitude and folded it the best she could before stuffing it in the back pocket of her jeans. "Is this where you toss me out on my rear, then?"

Seshat's smile was sad. "Yes."

And then there was deep, velvety darkness once again, and Corinne knew no more.

***

It was a grim-faced bunch who met a mere hour after Corinne's disappearance, on the spot where they'd seen her breathe her last as the blood covered her head. Haldir's mood could best be described as 'savage'; his reply to Radagast's inquiry of whether the bond was still active only marginally more brutal than when he saw Dawn stuffing a few of Corinne's notebooks and pens into her pack.

"She'll want to write everything down when we find her," Dawn explained tearfully, backing up in shock at the furious countenance of one very brassed-off elf. 

"She is **dead**," Haldir hissed, eyes blazing with anger and pain. "Dead, and therefore not likely to be writing anything, ever again." He sounded suspiciously close to sobbing, and clamped his mouth shut until his lips were only a thin, harsh line. 

"Settle down, Hal," Buffy admonished, pushing him back with a hand to the sternum. "We don't know if she's dead. And don't be mean to my sister. Try to remember that it's Aker who's the bad guy, ok?"

Haldir flung one last glare her way and stomped off to seethe in the corner beside Orophin, whose expression seemed to have settled permanently into 'bewildered apprehension'. Elessar and Boromir were murmuring in low whispers as they sharpened their swords, Arwen and Radagast had their heads together in a way that was somewhat worrying to Buffy's way of thinking, and Gimli and Thranduil were glaring at each other from across the clearing as Legolas studiously ignored them both, busying himself with checking the state of his arrows. 

"It is time," the wizard announced, and stepped to the center of the mosaic. "Dawn, if you please?"

She sighed. "Where's the knife?"

"Knife?" Radagast frowned in confusion. "Why do we need a knife?" He held up a long, sharp pin and gestured for her to come to him.

"Gandalf needed, like, a cup or so of Eau de Dawn," Buffy explained, watching closely as Radagast took Dawn's hand and quickly gave her thumb a light jab. A single bead of blood welled up and he grinned crookedly at them.

"Gandalf has always been less than delicate in his spellwork," Radagast said. "He might require a cupful; I need but a drop." And he turned her hand so the blood spilled into the air; a pinpoint of green light appeared and, with an almost casual wave of his hand over it, began to expand. 

"You are sure this is the door to Aker's realm?" Elessar queried, mistrust clear in his voice as the green light flattened into a shimmering disk that slowly grew to the size of a Man.

"Certainly," Radagast replied. "And even if it is not, we shall have a grand adventure, shall we not?" He grasped his pack by the trailing end of the rope binding it. "After you, your majesty."

Elessar narrowed his eyes, trying to discern whether the Istari was mocking him, but shouldered his own pack and stepped through, followed by Boromir and Arwen and Dawn. Raised voices alerted Buffy to the fact that Haldir and Thranduil were having an argument. 

"I will not allow my son to visit an alternate dimension without being there to protect him," Thranduil was saying, his volume never rising but his level of menace ratcheting upward alarmingly. 

"You son is more than adequate to the task of keeping himself alive without your esteemed presence," Haldir gritted back, taking a step closer to the king of Mirkwood.

"Just as he was adequate to the task of finding himself an appropriate spouse?" came the silken answer. At this insult to his friend, Haldir's eyes widened and his hand actually went to the hilt of his long knife, but Legolas stepped up to them. 

"Enough posturing," he said tautly. "When this is done, I will sit back with a cup of wine and sip with joy as you beat each other bloody, but for now, we have a foe to locate and defeat." He turned to his father. "Come, if you will, but do not raise the anger of we who are your journey-mates, else you find yourself abandoned along the way."

"Aye," Gimli affirmed. "We do not suffer nuisances, and ye be the king of such, my fine lord."

Thranduil opened his mouth, no doubt to say something horrifically rude about Glóin or some other relative of Gimli's, but Buffy clapped one hand over his mouth, grabbed the back of his leggings with the other, and tossed him unceremoniously through the portal. His pack followed a moment later, tossed with great enthusiasm and rather more force than strictly necessary by the dwarf. 

"I take no responsibility for killing him if he doesn't shape up, honey," she told Legolas warningly, and stepped into the swirling green mists. He passed his hand over his eyes in the universal gesture of "I'm getting a migraine" and shook his head before disappearing into the portal. 

That left only Gimli,  Radagast, and Haldir. Gimli heaved a gusty sigh, inexplicably pinched his nose shut, and dove in head-first, beard waving in the breeze, and Haldir shot the wizard one last glower before following the dwarf, albeit at a vastly more dignified pace and manner. 

Radagast smirked at Orophin, who would stay behind deal with anyone who might wonder where two kings, two princes, a queen, a princess, the Slayer, the Guardian, a dwarf, and a demigod had managed to vanish to. Then he thrust his hand into the centre of the portal, waved his staff, and in a flash of emerald light both wizard and portal disappeared.

Orophin stared a long moment at where it had been a moment before, then turned back to the house. "How I long for a nice, simple war," he muttered with nostalgia. "Some orcs, some Uruks, perhaps a Haradhrim or two just to keep things interesting. Straight-forward, uncomplicated." He entered the house and strode to the dining room, where sat the archers and soldiers left behind. "I expect you lot will be wanting some dinner, won't you?"

The elves nodded; the Men replied noisily in the affirmative. Orophin sighed. "Then I suggest you go out and kill something. One of you had better know how to cook, else we shall sup on raw venison this evening." He settled into one of the chairs vacated when they began to file from the room, feeling distinctly grumpy and wishing Rúmil would return soon, so he would have someone to complain to. 

loutrophoros = tall elegant vase

Iw-n-sisi = Isle of Fire

Ta-tenen = Island from the Dawn of Time


	21. Chapter 20

Author's Note: You might recognize, if you're a game geek like myself, that the description of Iw-n-sisi matches pretty closely to certain parts of Act 4 of Diablo II, as do some of the creatures everyone fights in this chapter. This is not a coincidence. Still don't own anything but the disjointed, fever-dream plot and Corinne. Sure wish I did, though. 

To Nimacu: good suggestion, but if I put the footnotes at the top, 1) they'd be headnotes, and that's just weird; and 2) they'd clue people in to what I want to be a surprise.

This chapter dedicated to everyone who voted for me at the Crossing Over Awards… thanks, guys! You rock.

Without Part 20

Spike blinked. "Well, this is different," he thought. He'd always imagined that existence, after being staked, wouldn't be quite so… hot. 

When that Polgara had gotten in a lucky stab with one of the bone skewers characteristic of his 'people' (and no, the irony of succumbing to one of the same demons that had killed Angel wasn't at all lost on him), in the split-second between wood-entering-heart and body-going-poof all he'd had time for was the briefest thought of Buffy and Dawn before consciousness shut off with the sudden snap of a light-switch being flicked. 

And now, with the same suddenness, he found himself standing on a rather sticky patch of what appeared to be melting asphalt as it bobbed atop what was, if Spike weren't mistaken, a sea of lava. Above was not so much a sky so much as a single, solid blob of roiling black and grey clouds. The glowing embers were all that illuminated the space around him, and he was very glad of his vampiric sight while at the same time marveling that he was still, evidently, a vampire (he switched to game face momentarily to make certain).  "Am I dead, or undead, or what?" he wondered aloud.

"You're not dead," a female voice informed him, and he spun around to find a short woman standing there. "Don't know about the undead part." She glanced around them at their environment. "As for the 'or what', well, yeah. I think we're both 'or what'."

She had the sort of plump, curvy body that had been all the rage back when he was alive in the 19th century, but it wasn't displayed to its best advantage in the jeans and shirt she wore. Her hair was darkish—the low light proved to thwart even his keen eyes—and fell to her shoulders in a rather rumpled mess. Her face, while plain, was intelligent and when she removed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from atop her head and perched them on her nose to study him more closely, he knew that standing before him was a scholar. 

"Ah," he replied noncommittally. "Where are we? Is this hell?" Wouldn't surprise him one bit—killing thousands of people and two Slayers, no matter how many years of playing with the good guys, didn't exactly add up to the place of harps and fluffy clouds. 

"Iw-n-sisi," she replied, gazing around at the swells and flows of magma around them. "The Isle of Fire," she clarified when Spike gazed at her in confusion. "Where the dead roam, as per ancient Egyptian legend."

"Egyptian, huh?" He fished around the interior pockets of his duster for a pack of cigarettes and lighter; as the flame ignited the end of the fag, causing a wreath of smoke to rise over his head in a wavy (and ironic) halo, he gestured at their surroundings. "That's new."

She gave him a half-smile. "So you're used to this sort of weird shit happening all the time, huh?" Beginning to walk along the strip of blackened ground, she motioned for him to join her, and they began to stroll in the direction of the orange-red glow in the distance.

He laughed, exhaling a blast of smoke into her face. She didn't complain, only continued to watch him, so he decided to be honest with her about the nature of her new companion. "Every day's a weird day when you're a vampire, luv," he commented, watching her closely.

"Vampire. Of course. Because my life's not strange enough as it is," she muttered, more to herself than to him. Then she peered through the gloom at his face, or more particularly, at his mouth. "You going to eat me?"

Spike took a long drag of his cigarette and tilted his head to the left. "And if I am?"

She sighed, shoulders slumping. "Then get a move on. I hate suspense."

He surprised her by laughing. "You're probably the type who flips right to the end of a murder mystery to learn whodunit."

"Like I had any time to read murder mysteries," she snorted. "With teaching, grading papers, my own classes, working on my dissertation…" That line of thought seemed to depress her, and she cut herself off abruptly. "Doesn't matter anymore," she said flatly. "I doubt there's such a thing as mystery novels in Arda." Then she looked around them again. "That is, if I ever get out of this hell-hole."

"Arda, huh?" Spike inquired. "Where the bloody hell is Arda?"

"That's what I wanna know," she replied with a hint of spirit, seeming to think that if he **were** going to eat her, he'd have done so by now. "I was just there an hour ago." She tripped over what looked to be a charred, dismembered hand, shuddered, and skipped to catch up to Spike, who'd just kept walking. "How did you get here?"

"Got staked," he replied succinctly, not exactly relishing the memory and wondering idly what the reaction of the Scoobies would be when he never returned to the Hyperion that night. With a pang, he realized he'd miss them. _Hm_, he thought, amused. _Didn't expect that_. "You?"

"Did a spell to break the power of an evil cartouche," she replied, stumbling again and this time clutching his sleeve to keep herself upright. At his pointed look, she released him and stepped back. "It made me sleepy and when I woke up, I was with a goddess in the mother of all libraries." The wistfulness in her voice confirmed his suspicion that she was a perennial student. "She offered me my dearest wet-dream— eternity with all those lovely, lovely books—" she clarified at his sharp glance sideways at her "—but it would mean a dirty deal for my friends, so I had to refuse."

"Regretting the choice?" Spike lit a second cigarette off the butt-end of the first and took a deeply satisfying drag whilst wondering idly where he was going to get his next meal in this deity-forsaken land. Apart from the schoolgirl, he'd not yet seen a glimpse of anything alive.

"Only a little," Corinne admitted. "Never be able to live with myself afterwards, knowing what I'd done to them and their world."

"Ah, a hero," he replied mockingly. "Can't get away from you white hats. Like a bloody infestation, you are."

"I'm no hero," she protested, her voice low and almost angry. "Heroes do things because it's right. I only did this to avoid feeling bad. Still selfish, just less so."

Spike quirked a brow again and, after a moment, held out the crumpled pack of cigarettes to her. "Well, Ms. I'm No Hero, fancy a fag? It's all the rage with us evil types."

She grinned and plucked one from the pack; it was slightly bent but didn't seem to bother her as she allowed him, suddenly seized with an urge to be gentlemanly, to light it for her. She even curtseyed awkwardly in response to his courtly bow. "My thanks, kind sir," she said, making him laugh.

"Spike," he introduced himself, offering a grubby paw to shake and wondering why her eyes—green, he thought—would have sharpened at that, as if she recognized the name.

"Corinne," she told him, shaking it before surreptitiously wiping it on her jeans, which weren't much cleaner than his hand. Wasn't his fault the Polgara'd bled all over him before staking him. All right, yes it **was** his fault, but he couldn't just stand there and let it slaughter him, could he? 'Course not.

"So, Corinne," Spike began conversationally, "where the hell are we going?"

"Dunno," she replied, almost cheerfully, pointing in the direction they'd been walking. "That way, it seems."

Spike sighed. "You've no plan at all, do you?"

She sliced a glance at him. "Wasn't exactly expecting to end up inside a lava lamp, you know." She waved around them. "I came from the other direction, a few hours ago. There was a firestorm, looked like a meteor shower… lit the sky up pretty well. Thought I saw a building or something in the distance, so I began to head this way."

Spike nodded at her sound reasoning. Squinting very hard, he could just make out the silhouette of some sort of structure, as well as some odd shapes that seemed to be moving. "Sodding hell," he muttered. "Can you fight at all?"

"Nope," she replied, still cheerful. "Not a bit. I know how to stop, drop and roll if I'm on fire, but that's about it." Her gaze sharpened on him. "Why, is there trouble?"

He sighed and scavenged through his duster pockets once more and coming up with a machete with chipped, but still very effective, blade as well as a pair of brass knuckles. "Here," he said, dumping them into her outstretched hands. "Anything comes at you, you punch 'em with all you got, hear?"

Corinne nodded, but didn't say a word. As they drew closer, Spike was able to see that the building was actually a burnt-out shell, and milling about it was a pair of strange creatures with many long, stalk-like legs supporting its body as a spider's would. At their feet squirmed about a half-dozen slug-things with arms but no legs, which at first sight of the newcomers began to propel themselves forward eagerly.

When they drew abreast of Spike and Corinne, he began to kill them with a single chop severing the head from the rest of the wormlike body. "Ugh," Corinne yelled, extracting her fist from one's doughy body, "Punching doesn't do anything. And," she continued, snatching her hand away from another's mouth, "they bite! Ow! Dammit! You creepy little bastard!" She drew back her foot and kicked it so hard it sailed through the air to land on the far side of its parent. It shook its head briefly, then rushed back at her.

"Just step on them!" he shouted back, lopping off another head. "Oh, bollocks," he added a moment later when one of the big ones advanced and, with a mighty belch, vomited forth another half-dozen of the sluggy things. He began moving more quickly, and when spider-thing number two expelled yet more of their wriggly foes, started to stomp on those he couldn't get to with his machete.

"Ew! Ew!" Corinne was chanting with each crunch of bone and splat of innard under her runners. "Oh, god, this is just nasty. This is worse than when that homeless guy hocked on me…"

"Shut it, you!" Spike snapped as the larger of the two spider-creatures started forward. "Here comes daddy!"

Upon closer inspection, it had rather dangerous looking pincers and Spike had to dodge nimbly out of their way for a full minute before he could find the precise angle to reach between its forelegs and sever its head from its thorax, but once he did, it slumped to the ground and moved no more. The smaller of the spider-things wasn't acting aggressive but he went over and killed it on principle, before it could spawn more slug babies. "Got 'im!" he crowed, looking back at Corinne only to find she was stomping on the worms so quickly it looked like she was dancing a particularly strenuous version of the hokey-pokey.

"I wonder," he said, sauntering up, "if that's what it's really all about. When people die, do they go to heaven and learn that it was just the hokey-pokey the whole time?"

Corinne sent him such a look of ire and disbelief that he had to laugh. She looked about as fearsome as a drowned kitten. "Why, of **course** I'll join you!" he cried in the tones of a Victorian gentleman. "How delightful of you to offer!" And he grabbed her brass-knuckle-sporting hands and began to waltz her over the slug-things, laughing as they splooshed beneath his booted feet.

She began, reluctantly, to laugh. "You are such a freak."

***

The portal deposited them at the peak of a mountain. Not a very interesting mountain, mind; mostly just brown dirt and scrub pine. The interesting thing about it was there was a path, upon which all 10 of the travelers stood; following it down one side would lead you to a rather pleasant-looking area of meadows and gently rolling hills, the occasional stream winding like a lazy silver ribbon. 

Down the other side of the mountain, however, was a bleak landscape leading to a black, dreary horizon; the odd boulder stood forlornly every few acres of so, but mostly there was just the path wending its way progressively deeper into the thickening gloom. The entire valley was lit with an eerie, flickering red light that seemed molten somehow, as if it had shape and volume.

Dawn sighed deeply. "Corinne'll be down that way."

Boromir glanced at her. "Why do you think that, sweet?"

"Well, she seems determined to get herself in as much trouble as possible. Do you really think she's on her way down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City," she waved to indicate the bucolic scene to the north, "or is it more likely she's about to be boiled in oil by a tribe of murderous pygmies, or whoever lives—" she waved to the murky land to the south "--there?"

"But what if you are wrong?" asked Legolas, his fair brow creased with concern. "It would be disastrous to seek her in one direction when she has gone another, for we know not what provision she has… she is not suited for battle, not in a world such as this."

"No, she's hopeless by herself," Buffy said, looking puzzled, as if she could not comprehend how a woman could allow herself to be so clueless about keeping herself alive. "So, we break into two groups, huh?"

"That might be most wise," Thranduil opined, squinting at the red haze. His voice, low and throbbing, sent a shiver up the spines of all the females present.

"Along what lines shall we be split?" asked Elessar. "Each group should have both sword and bow."

Radagast looked suddenly at Arwen, and her head snapped around to return his gaze. "Yes," she replied, "I do have some of my grandmother's gift."

"Excellent," he said, and surprised them all by grinning widely. "I can amplify your powers; we can thus communicate."

"So, Radagast in one group, Arwen in the other," Buffy stated. "And where Arwen goest, so doth Elessar, right, Strider?"

"Indeed," he agreed with a faint smile at her feeble attempt to speak Olde Westronne.

"I shall not be parted from my son," Thranduil commented idly, ambling over to a pine and staring fixedly at its skimpy branches.

That son glared at his father. "I am more than capable of protecting myself and my wife, Father," he replied testily. "And stop trying to talk to the trees, anyone with a teaspoon of brains can tell they do not speak to the Eldar, not in this place."

"Be that as it may," was the king's indolent response, and Buffy thought she could actually **hear** her husband grinding his molars together. She sympathized with his plight—who wanted an overprotective parent along on a dangerous mission, fussing about each scrape and bruise, after all?—but she also remembered how many times she'd longed for her mother over the past eighteen years. Someday Thranduil might be gone, and this was an opportunity that Legolas would not get back again.

"That's good," she found herself saying, steeling herself against the faint expression of betrayal in Legolas' crystalline eyes. "It'll give you two time to bond."

At the mention of the word 'bond' Haldir jerked, lifting his gaze from the stump he'd been contemplating. He'd not spoken once since entering the portal, and Buffy easily recognized the agony on his face—guilt, anguish, pain, despair, and a profound loneliness—because she'd once had that expression herself. She stepped to his side and gave him a swift hug. He stood stiffly, arms at his side, making no effort to return the gesture. 

"We'll find her, Haldir," she whispered as the others carefully avoided watching them. 

He blinked hard a few times, then turned his face down to hers. "I was merely concerned about being teamed with Thranduil, if you must know it, Dagnir," he drawled with the barest hint of his old snooty tone. 

"Looks like you're with Elessar and Arwen, then," she said cheerfully, squeezing his arm comfortingly. Elessar looked vaguely alarmed but resigned to the idea. 

"That leaves us and Gimli," Dawn piped up. "We don't want to be separated, so we'll go with Elessar and Arwen. You'd prefer to stay with Legolas anyway, wouldn't you, Gimli?"

The dwarf nodded firmly. "I would not leave him alone to the tender mercies of his father," he grumbled, and Buffy pouted.

"Alone? What am I, chopped liver? And Radagast is with us, too."

"Certainly not," Gimli replied heartily, clapping her on the shoulder so she staggered, needing the grinning Legolas to haul her upright. "But one's wife is not the same as one's comrade."

"Is she not both?" Thranduil asked, his voice insinuating itself at the base of Buffy's skull and almost making it itch. _Lethal_, she thought, and catching Dawn's eye, knew her sister was thinking the same thing. _He's lethal. But what a way to go…_

"We are here to destroy our foe," Radagast interrupted repressively, beginning to walk the trail toward the ominous south. "Not play counselor to a marriage that is—thus far—untroubled. Though," he continued, nailing Thranduil with a gimlet glance, "how long that trend continues has yet to be seen, if you are to be your usual meddling self."

Thranduil fell into step beside him, hands clasped behind his back in a posture Buffy recognized as the original to Legolas' own taking of the posture. It was clear that, with his silence, he was merely humoring the wizard, perhaps even waiting for the best time to mount a counter-attack, and Buffy heaved a sigh.

"Those two," Dawn said worriedly, "are gonna be trouble together."

Buffy shrugged her pack back onto her shoulders. "Yeah," she agreed. "But at least they'll keep each other busy, and the three of us—" she indicated herself, Legolas, and Gimli "can actually find Corinne." Then she turned toward the south. "Hey, you two!" she called after them, "don't get too far ahead!" Each raised a hand in acknowledgement, the gesture so similar that she couldn't help but laugh. 

"They will either murder the other, or become closest friends ere we see the end of this quest," Arwen said sagely, nodding when the others turned to her in surprise. "It is always the elven way," she continued. "Erestor and Glorfindel—ai, how they despised one another when first Glorfindel was returned by Mandos— _Ada_ and Gil-galad, Legolas and Gimli. It happens all the time. There are many songs sung about it."

"Elves and their songs," grumped Gimli, somewhat embarrassed to be included in such a group of illustrious warriors and counselors. "Always wailing away. A dwarf can find no peace." He began to stomp down the path after Thranduil and Radagast.

"Oh, did Galadriel's singing disturb you when last we were in Lothlórien?" asked Legolas, sauntering after his friend. "I will be sure to tell her that her 'wailing' pains you; I am sure she will trouble you with it no more." Then he darted nimbly to the side to avoid the axe that came sailing through the air toward his head.

"If they don't kill each other, I might," Buffy said darkly, and tromped along behind them. 

Erestor = Elrond's advisor

Glorfindel = died slaying a Balrog, was returned by the Valar of the dead, Mandos, to continue his fate as a warrior

_Ada_ = father (i.e., Elrond)

Gil-galad = last high king of the Noldor; killed in the first war of the ring


	22. Chapter 21

Author's Note: Cette chapître écrite pour graadlon.

Without 21

"No matter how you try," Legolas told his father with a sigh, "the trees here will **not** speak to you, _Ada_. 'Tis clear they are long dead."

They had been marching down the mountain for a few hours, and the landscape had grown progressively grimmer until there was nothing but the odd withered shell of a tree here and there. Thranduil had been trying without success to elicit information from each as they came to them, without success, and Legolas had become more than a little irate with his father for slowing down their progress in order to commune with nature.

Thranduil turned away from a particularly sad-looking specimen and patted the charred bark of its stunted trunk with affection. "Be that as it may," he replied with great serenity, and began ambling over to another tree in the distance. Ever since Gimli, of all people, had noticed tracks (perhaps because he was closer to the ground?) Thranduil had been striving hard to come up with his own important discovery. A competitive elf, was Mirkwood's king.

The tracks had been shallow, hardly noticeable if you weren't an elf or Slayer, with the word "Reebok" visibly imprinted in the glassy black soil if you looked at it from the right angle. This news had duly been reported to the other group via telepathy, making Buffy long for a cell phone or even just carrier pigeon-- anything less wiggy than people speaking in each other's heads.

"Your dad's a kook," Buffy whispered to Legolas, eyes never leaving her father-in-law's antics. "I know elves like trees, but isn't that a bit over-the-top even for someone from Mirkwood? Oooh… what's he doing now?"

For the king of that land had abandoned all pretense at aloofness and had wrapped his arms around the tree, pressing his elegantly pointed ear to it. The others stopped and stared shamelessly until he opened his eyes once again, his expression triumphant. "It says," he informed them with more than a touch of gloating, "that there are many fell beings this side of the mountain, which is named Mertseger. The lord of storms often shows his face in this harsh land, and we must beware of a being named Satet." Pulling away from the tree, he reaffixed the tiny, beautifully-wrought golden cuff to the outer curve of his ear and surveyed them with an expression of deep satisfaction.

"Satet?" Radagast frowned in concentration. "Is she not the goddess of war of this realm?" He paused to think, not noticing the looks of near-panic exchanged by the others (except for Thranduil, who never looked anything akin to panicky). "Nay, that is not it, though I am sure Satet has a lioness' head as well… ai, Yavanna, how strange these other dimensions be. How I rejoice Iluvatar felt not the need to vary the races so, in our beloved Arda." He seemed to believe She could hear him, and Buffy watched curiously to see if the wizard received a response, but he merely he wandered off, staff stumping along at his side. 

She grinned at Gimli. "Seen any more of those tracks?" 

The dwarf answered in the negative, but just then Legolas shouted from where he'd gone to scout ahead. Jogging toward her husband, she saw he was holding something between his fingers and staring down at it in confusion.

"It smells not unlike the Hobbits' pipeweed," he said as they approached, "but is wrapped in parchment. Is it placed in a pipe?" 

Buffy stopped dead, staring with wide eyes at the cigarette butt her husband held. It could only mean that someone from her world—or one similar to it, like Corinne's—was here as well. "Look for more footsteps," she urged, and it was Thranduil whose sharp eyes found the second pair—boots, they appeared to be, larger, with thick soles. 

"A Man," the elf-king concluded, head tilted consideringly to the side. "Medium height."

"Ten, perhaps eleven stone in weight," Legolas added from beside his father, his head also tilted. They were so similar in build and colouring already; having their mannerisms match also caused Buffy to wonder if it were adorable or just plain scary. 

"Frightening," Gimli murmured, having decided for her. She agreed rather fervently when both elves straightened and glanced over their right shoulders, shooting identically alluring glances from beneath half-lowered lashes. 

"Terrifying," she agreed, but couldn't prevent a smile from curving her lips— each had just noticed what the other was doing and both now exchanged glares before turning away and kicking their left feet at some of the angular black rocks that littered the ground.

"Nauseating," Radagast declared, sweeping by them in a swirl of rusty brown robes. "If you recognize this thing Legolas has found, Dagnir, it would be helpful to actually mention that fact to us."

Legolas and Thranduil turned to look at her, and Gimli peered up into her face; Buffy felt much like she was back in high school; Radagast was almost as disagreeable as old Schneider had been. "Um, yeah," she said. "That's a cigarette. It's like smoking a pipe, but the tobacco's in a tube of paper, instead of a pipe." 

Something was tugging at her memory, this cigarette combined with the bootprint, but try though she might, nothing came to the forefront. She sighed in frustration. "Well," she began, pushing a straggle of hair back from her face, "at least Corinne's not alone any more."

"Her new companion might not be friendly," Legolas countered. "What if he is one of Aker's beings?"

"Then she has even greater need of her rescuers than before," Gimli stated, and turned to stare at the horizon. His expression changed from grim determination to concern. "Look you yonder," he directed, a sense of urgency in his voice that wasn't there before, and he pointed.

The clouds that roiled overhead, varying in shade from charcoal to pitch to gunmetal, had begun to coalesce into a teeming dark mass of supreme menace which emitting a blinding flash of scarlet as what appeared to be a flaming meteor zipped by overhead, lighting up the sky for a moment before "There's the hellfire," Buffy said, and anything further she might have added was obscured when it crashed with a deafening noise to the ground, making it shake beneath their feet. "Ah, that must be the brimstone."

"Dagnir," Legolas addressed her, a new urgency in his voice, "if I am not mistaken, there are ruined buildings in the distance, and two figures… they were… dancing." He frowned and turned to her. 

"Dancing?" An odd action for such a depressing place, she felt. 

***

A few miles ahead of them, Corinne couldn't agree more. "Spike," she yelled, thumping him hard on the shoulder, "they're all squished. You can stop now."

He dropped his arms and stepped back. "So they are," he agreed, surveying their killing spree with satisfaction.

"Why are you all happy?" she asked, wishing she had a stick or something to wipe off the worm spooge, but settling for dragging her feet on the ground, scraping the worst of it off. "Our situation isn't what you might call 'promising'."

"Could be worse," Spike told her, beginning to walk  "We could be in a jungle." He turned around to face her, walking backward whilst giving her a jaunty grin. "It's not the heat, pet, it's the humidity."

"Yeah, yeah," Corinne grumbled. "That's what they all say, and they're completely full of—" Whatever she would have said was cut off when Spike stumbled, then froze, a look of great alarm coming over his face.

"Bloody hell," he said, and then he was gone. 

Eyes wide, Corinne ran over to where he'd been a moment ago, and found that where he'd been walking had a symbol etched into a flat rock set into the ground. Bending low and squinting, she could just make out his footsteps, and how they led directly to there. "Oh, you stupid bastard," she murmured, then, "What the hell."

Standing, she purposefully stepped onto the symbol. The world seemed to wink out of existence, and then there was a hoot like a car horn. Corinne felt a rushing sensation around her, and then she was dropped into a shallow pool of what she soon learned, when she snorted it out her nostrils, was stale water. Wiping her eyes, she blinked at the bright sunlight, then coughed up a piece of slimy something, seaweed or similar. 

She appeared to be sitting in the middle of a large, waist-deep puddle ringed with reeds and long, waving grasses. Bubbles blooped rhythmically not far from her, and she shifted away from them as she looked around. Tall trees with vines trailing like skeletal fingers to the ground surrounded her on every side, and the underbrush was thick as well. Even drenched, she could tell that the air was thick with moisture, and the faint steam that rose from the surface of her puddle assured her that it was pretty freaking hot.

"Spike!" she croaked as loudly as she could, and stood. Coughing, she brought up another bit of greenery. "Spi-"

"No need to shout, pet," he said from behind her, and she spun around to find him standing on the shore of the puddle, water lapping gently at his boots as he grinned wildly at her. 

"You're **still** happy?" she demanded accusingly. "We—" she gestured around them, then let her arms drop tiredly to her sides. "It's a jungle. You said a jungle would be worse, and now we're in one. You suck."

"Don't worry 'bout none of that, Schoolgirl. Look." He pointed up.

She obediently looked up. All she could see through the shimmering heat waves surrounding them were the distant treetops and, above them, the blue and cloudless sky. "Yeah, and?"

Spike's shoulders slumped. "Silly bint." Flinging his arms wide, he spun in a circle. "It's daytime. There's sunlight all over the place." He pointed to himself. "Vampire, remember?" Comprehension dawned on her face as he continued. "And yet, I'm neither shrieking and flaming, nor a little pile of dust on the ground." 

He tilted his head back and basked in the ray of light that fell over his face; it threw the sharp angles of his face into stark relief and made him, quite ironically Corinne thought, look positively angelic. "I don't wanna hear it if it turns out you sunburn easily," she warned sourly, plucking the wet fabric of her shirt away from her chest and frowning. Wet jeans were damned uncomfortable. 

She ducked behind a massive tree and shimmied out of her clothes, squeezing as much water from them as she could. "Now what do we do?" _Oh, that was a mistake_, she thought crossly as she tried to pull her jeans back on. Finally buttoned back into the resisting garment, she emerged and found him staring at the ground. 

"There's a path," Spike replied, pointing to the right. "I say we follow it."

"Which way?" Corinne wanted to know, but just then a garbled roar sounded in the distance. There was a thud, and the ground shivered.

"Away from **that**," Spike recommended when another thud sounded and they realized that the thuds were actually massive footfalls. He began to run, pausing only long enough to catch her hand and force her to keep up with him. 

As they pelted through the jungle, Corinne wondered what Haldir was doing at the moment, and if he'd had the sense to steer clear of reckless vampires with a talent for getting himself (and, by connection, his companion) into trouble. It was strange to be able to think of the elf without the compulsive lust and longing; she felt lonely without his comforting presence in her mind, and oddly light and unburdened without that aching nausea and fear for him when they were parted for so long. 

Long years of multi-tasking both note-writing and daydreaming in class allowed her to run wherever Spike led as she allowed her thoughts to wonder back to that morning. Had it only been a few hours ago that she'd been writhing under Haldir as his beautiful body pierced hers, only hours ago that he'd promised to love her with his last breath? Had it only been a few hours since he'd attacked her? 

She knew him better than anyone else on Arda, and was sure he was beating himself up horribly about it. The thought of him despising himself made tears sting her eyes, and she stumbled and fell as she struggled to keep from just collapsing into a heap and sobbing for him, for her, for them. 

Spike opened his mouth to say something no doubt unspeakably rude but took one look at her face and said nothing but, "Hurry," as he yanked her to her feet and began to run again. Corinne chanced a look back and caught a glimpse of a huge, hairy leg; she hurried.

***

Haldir was fervently relieved to be one of Elessar's group, instead of Dagnir's, as there was no way he could have borne her well-intended fumblings about the disastrous events of that morning. His refusals to talk with her would have been ignored; she was nothing if not persistent. 

Once it had become clear she would get nothing from him, she would have badgered her husband to approach him, and Haldir would have felt bad about maiming poor Legolas, but his mood was savage enough that maiming was probably the best of all possible results, the worst being 'brutal dismemberment'. 

It was very possible that his bond with Corinne was severed; it was even possible he might be sad about it. There was no way for him to know, however, because a sense of bewildered, frightened, enraged fury for nearly raping her not two hours ago had encompassed him until he felt as if he could easily do harm to himself, so filled with self-loathing was he.

Nearly four thousand years old, and a warrior trained in the art of complete, utter, unfailing control of himself, and he had failed. Failed his teachers and their long lessons all those centuries ago; failed Corinne and her trust in him. Every other second brought a new flash of her face, of her eyes, as desire and love melted away to be replaced with fear and betrayal. He had only been stopped by Dagnir's timely arrival from taking Corinne with a violence he'd never before suspected he'd harboured. 

Most of all, he'd betrayed himself. Haldir had spoken true when he'd said it had always been him—all along, buried deep, had been that fragment of him that relished the cruelty. 'Twas not hard to understand, for had he not risen to the top ranks of elven warriors because of his prowess in battle? And did he not fling himself, wholeheartedly, into the melées with his knives, when other elves stood back and plied their bows? Was he not renowned for his cool dispatch of dozens, even hundreds, without remorse?

Foolish for him to have thought he could be a killer in matters of war, and yet a serene elf in matters of peace. And in matters of love… as he trod along at the rear of the group, eyes fixed on the lush ground beneath his feet, he felt his throat close in sorrow and blinked hard to prevent the tears from falling.

Whatever love he might have had with Corinne was over now; even had the cartouche not been broken, his actions earlier had surely ruptured whatever kind feelings for him she might have been disposed to. Her eyes, ai, her eyes… so wide, overflowing with adoration for him, and then so empty but for the terror. Terror of him, who should have died before causing her pain. Filled with shame, he did not believe he would ever be able to look at her face again. _That is not my right,_ he thought bitterly. _I do not have the privilege of gazing at her._

So resolved was he to spend the rest of his existence atoning for his trespass that he failed to notice the others had stopped, and so continued walking.

"Haldir," Arwen said softly, placing her hand on his arm.

Surprised, he jerked away from her, eyes blazing. "Do not touch me," he gasped, hand halfway to his dagger-hilt before relaxing. The others stared at him, shocked. "My apologies," he said after a moment.. "But please do not touch me, I cannot bear it."

Arwen nodded slowly. "Radagast has told me they have found tracks, and believe them to belong to Corinne," she told him carefully. 

"Should we turn around and join the others, then?" Boromir asked, and Arwen's exquisite visage frowned slightly as she relayed the message. 

"It is not as easy for me as for Grandmother," she said with a deprecating smile that caused two tiny, perfect dimples to emerge in her smooth cheeks. "Radagast tells me that Dagnir wishes for us to continue as we are, that we should concentrate on locating Aker, and they will focus on finding Corinne." She paused again, and her smile widened. "She also wishes me to tell you that you must 'lighten up' as she puts it, or she will 'kick your hiney all the way back to Arda'." The half-elleth turned to her husband. "Elessar, what is a 'hiney'?" she asked, but he shook his head, grinning. 

"Tell Dagnir all is under control, and for her to concentrate on her own moody elf," he directed flatly, and Arwen laughed when she reported Dagnir's question: "Which one?"

"It is done," Arwen said at last, and they resumed course, walking for another few hours until Dawn complained of hunger, thirst, and really sore feet. The terrain wasn't at all difficult, all gentle slopes and cool streams and shady trees for their brief rests, even plenty of fluffy bushes for when a bit of privacy was in order. Altogether, a rather decent place, if you happened to be in a surreal dimension tracking down an evil god who was threatening your world. 

Dawn plopped down on a hassock of grass, nodding absently when Boromir said he'd bring her a bite, and pulled off her boots to massage her toes, stopping only when a hand held a piece of lembas in front of her face. 

"Here you go, Dawn," said a warm, loving, female voice. A familiar voice, a voice that made her think of the earliest moments of her life: a soft song lulling her to sleep, the scent of milk, the warmth of a soft and comforting embrace. A voice she hadn't heard in nineteen years.

Dawn whipped up her head to find Joyce Summers standing before her, beaming happily at her younger daughter. "Mom?"

_Ada_ = Father


	23. Chapter 22

Author's Note: Mut's speech was inspired by "Thunder, Perfect Mind" (a monograph written as Sophia, goddess of wisdom in Gnostic Christianity) from the Nag Hammadi Library (Dead Sea Scrolls). The whole thing is way too long to put here, but it's gorgeous and inspiring, esp. to women into that whole pantheistic goddess thang. if you're interested.

Without, Part 22

"Mommy?" Dawn said, her words almost a whimper as her gaze roamed hungrily, disbelievingly over her mother, taking in the brown curls of hair and bright eyes. There was even the faint scent of the Coco perfume that Joyce had always favoured. She wore the flowered black halter-dress she'd worn on her last date, the night before she'd died… Dawn blinked. 

"Dawnie," Joyce replied, smiling. "I've been watching, you know… I was so proud of you for coming to be with Buffy." She took Dawn's limp hand and placed the lembas in it, then began strolling in a slow circle around her daughter, face turned up to the sunlight. "It's so good to see you happy. You are happy with Boromir, right?"

Dawn nodded numbly, slipping the lembas into her pocket, and her mother continued. "I'm glad. Wouldn't want to have to hit him with an axe." In spite of the gravity of the situation—and bizarrity of the conversation-- Dawn felt her lips tugging upward at the memory of how Joyce had clocked Spike in the head the first time he'd tried to kill Buffy. "And Mercas… oh, Dawn, I'm so proud. You've given me a beautiful grandson." Her smile turned wistful. "I only wish I'd been there with you for your pregnancy, and the birth…"

At that, the floodgates opened, and Dawn burst into tears. "Why are you here?" she sobbed. "Is it really you? Not a zombie you?"

"I'm as real as anything gets here, Dawn," Joyce said with one of her rakish grins, brushing away the wetness that spilled onto her daughter's cheeks. "And don't I look great?" She craned her head to examine her backside. "In real life, I'd be almost sixty-five… I'm fairly sure my tush would be nowhere near this firm."

Dawn managed to smile through her tears. "But why are you here, Mom? What's going on?"

"I'm worried about you, Dawn," Joyce replied in her quiet way, sobering. "This place… it's dangerous. I don't want you to get hurt. What would happen to Mercas? I don't want him to end up an orphan, like you did. I think you should call it quits and go home, right away."

Dawn stiffened. "Nothing's going to happen to Boromir or I," she protested. "And even if it did, Eowyn and Faramir love him, and would take care of him like their own. So would Buffy and Legolas. Hell, so would Gimli, if it came to that—"

"But it doesn't have to come to that," Joyce interrupted, stooping a little so she could take Dawn's hands. The feel of her mother's warm skin against her own almost made her cry again as the memories rushed back: Joyce kissing away childhood boo-boos, pouring her juice, tucking her into bed, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. Joyce saying she loved Dawn, was proud of her, would miss her…

 _Ok, so what if they were only falsely implanted memories. They were still there in her head, and they felt real enough,_ Dawn thought crossly, squeezing back. 

"Are you listening to me, Dawnie?" Joyce asked, voice a little sharp. "I need you to pay attention to me."

"I'm listening, Mom," she replied, even as her mind flew over what she should do. She had to introduce Boromir to her mother! "Mom, you have to meet Boromir, he's right… here…" Her words trailed off as she turned to where she'd last seen him, only to find that there was no one around, save her and Joyce.

"I needed to talk to you alone," her mother explained. "But you have to listen… this place is dangerous. You have to go back. Go back to Arda, and go home right away."

"You mean, to Minas Ithil?" Dawn asked, starting to get confused. "But I can't, we have to find Corinne, and there's this god, and he…" She stopped speaking abruptly, for Joyce's face had taken on an avid cast, an eagerness to hear what Dawn would say that didn't exactly suit the circumstances, and the clot of hope that had been choking her plummeted to her stomach, to be replaced by a hard knot of anger.

"Who are you?" Dawn demanded, voice low and dangerous, hands clenching at her sides.

"Dawnie, it's me. It's Mom," Joyce replied, her pretty face clouding with concern. "What's wrong?" She came forward to stroke her daughter's head, but Dawn pulled away.

"You're not my mother," she said dully, turning away.

"Dawnie…" Joyce tried again, hand outstretched, but Dawn batted her hand away. "Punkin' belly…"

The pet name sent a lance of pain through her. "I don't know who you are, but you're not her." Head bent low, she studied her hands and hoped desperately that the Joyce-imposter would go away soon. "You should go now, because I won't do anything you say." She couldn't take much more of the looking at her, now that she knew it wasn't really her mother. _Oh, Mommy_.

There was a whisper on the wind, and then a firm hand was grasping Dawn's chin, lifting it. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut but there appeared an image in her mind, that of a woman with close-cropped hair and skin the colour of coal. Wings of snowy-white curved forward around her shoulders, and she wore a circlet with a disc of gold on her brow. Her gaze, when it fell on Dawn, was both stern and loving—in a word, maternal. 

"Who are you?" Dawn whispered, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking.

"Some call me Mut, some call me Eve," the winged woman replied calmly. "I am Shakti, I am Kerridwen, I am Hera and I am Grandmother." 

Dawn only stared blankly in confusion. "You're not my mother."

"I **am** your mother, child," she stated, eyes soft and sooty-black as they rested on Dawn's face. "I am everyone's Mother. I am the first and the last, both honored and scorned. I am the whore and the saint, the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter; I am the barren one, and many are my sons." Then she smiled, her teeth blinding in contrast to her dark-satin complexion. "Forgive me for the deception; it was necessary to at least try." Then she released Dawn's chin and stepped back. "Return soon to your son, child. He misses you."

The wings expanded, grew; they wrapped around the woman like a shroud, then faded way to nothingness, and Dawn opened her eyes to find the others ranged around her, all similarly shell-shocked. Arwen wept softly, calling, "Naneth, Naneth," while Elessar, his face grave, held her and surveyed the others. Boromir's jaw was clenched, but Dawn was well familiar with her husband's expressions and knew he was battling tears. 

"It's not really her," she told him softly, slipping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest. His own arms enfolded her tightly, and he buried his face against her hair, breathing deeply of its scent as he always did when upset, just like Mercas did. "It wasn't really her, honey."

"I know that, sweet," he replied, his voice muffled. "She was just as I remember her, Faramir looks just like her…"

"She too had a beard?" Elessar queried, smiling faintly when Boromir lifted his head and stared, startled, at his king before realizing he was being teased.

"Haldir, you are well?" Boromir asked the elf. Haldir nodded immediately, to no one's surprise; if he'd been a skeptic before, then dealing with Aker and the cartouche had made a hardened cynic of him.

 "We must be on our guard," Elessar declared. "For it is clear they do not scruple to avoid that which we hold dearest; naught is sacred here, and we will be attacked where we are most vulnerable." He looked down at his wife, who had ceased her crying and now sniffled quietly against his shoulder. Haldir looked pointedly into the distance; if any of them knew how Aker struck a vulnerable point, it was he. "A reprehensible way to fight a battle, is it not, Boromir?"

Boromir studied the tear-stained visage of his own wife, and nodded grimly. "Aye, and one they will regret, Elessar." The look on his face boded ill for Aker. "When Arwen is well enough, she should relay a message to the others of… this experience, so they are warned." 

Dawn was fervently relieved that Buffy wasn't with them. She didn't know how well her sister would handle seeing Joyce again, as her last sight of their mother had been the discovery of her dead body on the living room sofa. Splashing cool, clear water from a nearby spring over her face, she could only hope the other group was having a better time of it.

***

"You are mad," Spike declared as he hacked his way through the jungle. The rhythmic, almost hypnotic, motion of his arm was in direct counterpoint to the jangling disharmony of his senses, which were on full alert. "**Howling** mad," he clarified. "No way in hell Bette Midler's version of 'Beast of Burden' was better than the Stones'."

"It was **so** better," Corinne contradicted, panting as she strove to keep with him. The heat and heavy dampness of the air had her soaked with perspiration, and she swiped matted curls off her forehead for what seemed like the fourteenth time in as many minutes, feeling like she'd sell her soul for a hair scrunchie. "Mick Jagger is totally overrated… lousy singer, and damned ugly too. What Jerry Hall ever saw in him…"

Spike rolled his eyes. "The man's a genius," he informed her. "You obviously have no appreciation of the true classics of modern music. Next you'll be telling me the slow version of Layla is better than the original."

"It is!" Corinne exclaimed, earning her another eye roll. "It's so sensual and dark."

"That's it," Spike said flatly, wondering how much longer his machete could carry on without needing a sharpening. Already its edge had blunted to where he was more bludgeoning the vegetation rather than slicing it.. "I have to kill you now."

"Well, let me catch my breath first," she said with a laugh, bending over and bracing her hands on her knees. "Then you can kill me all you like."

Spike took the opportunity to rest his arms a little. They'd been following the river on the premise that it would eventually lead to civilization, but unless you counted weird pygmy tribes armed to their pointy little teeth with what turned out to be very painful blow-darts, none was to be found. "How's that doing?" he asked, motioning to her arm where she'd experienced one of the darts first-hand.

"Sore," she replied, twisting to try to see the wound on the back of her upper arm. "More upset the shirt's ruined, though. It was a DKNY original."

He gave a bark of laughter, the sound echoing over the shoulder-high reeds surrounding them and startling some nearby birds to flight, their wingbeats the only sound in the ensuing silence. "Shades of Cordelia," he said at last, smirking down at her. "Maybe I should rechristen you Cordy Junior."

"Only if you want a Reebok up your undead butt," Corinne informed him, giving up on inspecting her arm to look at him. "How are you holding up? How long's it been since you've eaten?" She paused. "Um. Since you've drunk." Pause. "Um. What do you call it?"

"I call it feeding, pet." He leaned closer and gave her a credible leer. "And a Reebok up the butt? Schoolgirl, for me that's just foreplay."

To his disappointment, she only frowned at him. "Behave yourself," she told him severely, placing her hands in the small of her back to rub the sore muscles. "Or else no supper for you."

Now it was his turn to frown. "What, you're gonna keep me from catching a bird or pygmy? Like to see you try."

"I was referring," Corinne said, rotating her head to ease her aching neck, "to the all-night-but-definitely-not-all-you-can-eat Corinne Williams buffet." She gave him a sideways glance. "But if you'd rather eat a bird or a pygmy…"

"No, no," he said hurriedly, taking up the machete once more and getting back to his weedwacker impression. "I'm just… surprised, is all. Never met someone who'd let me feed from them."

She shrugged. "Well, it just makes sense. I like to think of myself as a logical person. Now that my libido is my own again, that is," she added with a hint of asperity. "I've been eating all the fruit I can hold since we landed here, and there's plenty of fresh water; I'm doing fine, and if you only take a cup a day I figure I'll be able to refill myself while I sleep." She peered at him. "Can you survive on only a cup a day?"

"Not really," Spike admitted. "But human blood will definitely keep me going better and longer than animal blood… a few birds just to top me up after a mouthful or two from you, I should be grand." He looked over his shoulder to study her with bright eyes. "Do you really trust me that much?"

"Well," she began thoughtfully, "I figure, if you were going to drain me dry, you'd have done so already. You don't seem the type to be able to stick with long-winded nefarious plots, you know? I doubt you're going to save me for later."

Thinking back to how he'd jumped the gun on attacking Buffy that first time because he'd gotten bored whilst waiting, Spike chuckled. "Got me pegged there, pet." Then he spun around and brought the machete toward her neck, stopping only a scant inch from her throat. Her eyes huge behind the lenses of her spectacles, she stopped in her tracks and stood there, barely breathing as she waited for his next action. "But you'd best not forget what I am, and what I can do. Complacency is dangerous, and you're just a child."

Corinne blinked at him, and then lifted a hand to delicately push aside the machete with a fingertip. "Are you done with the heap-big scary guy thing now? I'm not afraid anymore. After all the crap that's happened to me in the last month, you'd think I'd be afraid of every damned thing, but I'm not. The fear has been just… bleached out of me, or something. I don't know. All I know is that Haldir's not with me anymore. Apart from that, I'm lost." She motioned to the machete. "Can we get a move on now?"

Spike saw a hardness in her eyes, not-quite-set, as if it were freshly painted and not dry yet, as if she weren't used to being so wary and tough, and the poet in him felt a pang of sadness on her behalf. The death of hope was always a tragic thing for him, no matter that he'd been the cause of it hundreds of times his own self. "Yeah," he replied at last. "Let's get going."

They hadn't gone far when they met up with another band of the sodding pygmies, and it took all of Spike's speed and agility to dodge their tiny feathered missiles whilst at the same time getting close enough to snap their stubby necks. Gibbering wildly, waving their gruesome fetishes, they delighted in causing great confusion and preventing him and Corinne from working as a team. She devoted her attentions to beating the nearest pygmy with her brass knuckles, filling the air with resounding meaty thuds whenever she connected, and Spike was confident enough to leave her to her own resources while he dispatched the others. 

That was his mistake. When he turned back to take care of the one she was fending off, he noted that she'd gone a funny colour under her normal hue of bookworm-pale: sort of greenish, like she was nauseous, but also tinged bluish, as if she were cold. "Teal," he muttered, sending her opponent to that big pygmy hut in the sky. "You've gone teal." He frowned, and caught her as she collapsed, seeing as he did the dart embedded in her backside. "That can't be good."

He pulled it free and swung her limp form into his arms, the machete still clutched in his hand and sticking out rather dangerously. He looked skyward and saw that it was beginning to grow dark. "Bloody hell." They had to get to shelter and quickly, or they'd not survive for him to enjoy another sunny day.

An hour later, he'd stumbled into a deserted camp, probably inhabited by the same pygmies they'd killed earlier and who'd injured Corinne. After selecting the least-decrepit of the huts and starting a fire in its central hearth, he placed the tip of the machete in the embers and removed Corinne's jeans. She was still unconscious and, more disturbingly, still teal. It was actually not a bad look for her, Spike thought to himself. Not every day you saw a teal woman, after all. Gave her a bit of intrigue to make up for her lack of looks.

Rolling her onto her front on one of the grass mats lining the floor of the hut, he inspected the site where the dart had lodged. It was on that swell pf muscle where butt cheek met thigh, and a welt the size of a pancake radiated out from a central pinpoint of dark, vicious purple. 

Unconscious, she did not respond, and he didn't feel quite so bad when he switched to game face and sank his fangs carefully on either side of the wound. Jerking back, he managed to avoid the jet of black, infected blood that shot out of her. When it slowed to a trickle, he lowered his mouth to pull fresh blood of bright, clean red through to cleanse the injury. It was the first time in decades he'd fed on a live human, and he found himself grasping her hips tightly as he fed, relishing the hot sweetness of her life's essence before forcing himself to stop. 

Wiping his mouth carelessly on the back of his hand, he turned to the fire. "This is going to hurt, pet. A lot," he told her. Even in the dim light it was clear the dart-wound had caused a mess, and he took up the now-glowing machete after placing a twig between her teeth. "Sorry 'bout this," he said, and touched the cherry-red metal to her leg, instantly sealing the gaping and ragged flesh as the smell of cooking meat filled the air. 

Corinne jerked, whimpering pitifully, and he had to press hard on her back to keep her still. Finally it was done and he tossed the machete aside. Covering her with his duster, he lit a cigarette from the fire and slumped back against the wall, resting his arm on his raised knee and lazily bringing the fag to his lips.

She'd been a right trooper, this one. They'd shared a few of their particulars whilst trekking through the jungle, and he'd learned she'd been under some major mojo compelling her to lust for some elf bloke. God that'd caused it—Aker—sounded like a nasty piece of goods, too, but then hadn't Spike learned the hard way what it was like to deal with gods? 

An image of Buffy's form, silhouetted dark against the brilliant flare of the portal, shimmering and deadly as she passed through it, came to him then and he felt his reserve crumble. After three decades he was pretty much over her, but he'd always had an excellent memory, Spike had, and the recollection of what he'd felt at that moment could still shatter him. At least he now knew she was safe in that other world thanks to the Powers—

_Hang on._ Facts he'd believed unrelated and merely floating around in the murky void of his brain were coming together, coalescing… he thought back, concentrating hard, on the last time he'd seen Dawn. It had been the lobby of the Hyperion, twelve years previous, and Buffy had stood on the other side of the portal with… an elf. 

And his name, Spike realized with an almost audible click as the pieces fell into place, had been Haldir.


	24. Chapter 23

Without, Author's Note

10/29/03

Without chapter 23 contains some sexual content, so please visit the site below to read it.

http:// groups . yahoo . com / group / CinnamonGrrl / files / Without / 

(remove the extra spaces between the / and . for the actual URL)

You can return here to leave a review, if you wish.

Thanks for your interest.


	25. Chapter 24

Author's Note: please let me know if I've handled Buffy's reunion with Spike well, or if they seem OOC. Remember that Buffy's made her peace with him (see TGoD chapters 14 and 15). Am VERY concerned with rendering Spike properly; if anything seems OOC I beg you, let me know. 

This chapter dedicated to Boromir and Haldir. Here's hoping they forgive me for how I sacrificed them for the sake of plot in the last chapter. 

Without, Part 24

"I don't trust you either," rumbled Gimli from the far side of the fire pit.

Thranduil turned from his perusal of the river in the distance to face the dwarf. It was a lovely night, if one discounted the staggering heat, equally unpleasant humidity, and less-than-ideal companionship. A longing for the cool and shady forests of Mirkwood flashed through him, quickly and ruthlessly suppressed. Had he not lived enough of his life longing for what could not be had?

The elf surveyed Gimli a long moment. He was son to one of the party who had so kindly paid him a visit last century, but he could not be sure which. It mattered little; a dwarf was a dwarf, short and disagreeable and unpleasantly resistant to his machinations. That they claimed the ugliest language this side of the Ered Lithui did not help matters any, either.

"Your pardon, Master Dwarf," he said calmly, the barest hint of overexaggeration in his tone. "But I was not aware that I had spoken, especially about your trustworthiness, or lack thereof."

The dwarf smiled, a tight smile that held an unsurprising amount of warning. "You do not sleep now, because you do not trust a dwarf to keep watch."

Thranduil's gaze was cool, assessing. "Ah, you have found me out," he replied smoothly. "How canny you are."

Gimli's eyes narrowed. "Now you mock me."

"Not at all." Thranduil clasped his hands behind his back and turned once more to face the river. 

Gimli waited for him to say more, but the elf was silent. Shooting a glance to the others, he saw that Buffy and Legolas slept peacefully in each other's arms to his right, and Radagast lay in deep repose to his left. Standing, muscles protesting after a long day of walking, he made his way to Thranduil's side.

"What's so blasted interesting about the river?" he demanded, striving to keep his voice low so as to not wake them. He followed the line of the elf's gaze; try though he might, there was naught unusual or particularly fascinating about it; just some water, some rocks, and a damned lot of weeds if you asked him.

"There are many things about a river to intrigue a person," Thranduil answered easily. "See how the moon reflects off the water? The ripples are like purest mithril. And the water itself—so black in the night, like a torrent of ink." He took a deep breath, chest rising and falling with the evenly. "The smell is fresh, damp, primal—one can easily imagine the first days of Arda after Iluvatar created it, with that scent in one's nose, do you not agree, Master Dwarf?"

Completely disconcerted, Gimli barely had time to stammer, "Er…" before Thranduil continued.

"The river teems with life. Fish, frogs, snakes." He watched Gimli slap at a mosquito buzzing around his beard, and smirked. "Insects." He turned his gaze, green where Legolas' was blue, upstream and it sharpened, as if he expected to see something. Shadows cast by the moon carved a more severe cast to his profile; in this light, he closely resembled the hawks he'd been observing that day. "And, if one is patient, people."

Up to this point, Gimli had been goggling at the idea of having such a… normal conversation with the haughty king, and Thranduil's last statement redoubled his confusion. He already knew Legolas' father was annoying; perhaps he was mad as well? 

"People? In the river?" he asked, snorting disdainfully. "I think you might be mistaken, your fine majesty."

Thranduil sliced a glance at Gimli, and a slow smile spread across his handsome visage. "But of course," he agreed silkily. "I forget how inferior elven senses are to dwarven. But will you humour me, and tell me what you see by the water's edge?"

Gimli was now positive that Mirkwood had a lunatic for a monarch, but felt compelled to look by the sheer force of Thranduil's scorn alone. "Lot of mad elves," he muttered, stomping down the embankment and through the reeds that loomed higher than his head. "There is no one here," he called quietly up to where Thranduil's dark form stood starkly against the moonlit sky. 

"There will be," the enigmatic answer drifted down to him as Thranduil turned and walked away, presumably back to the fire.

Great pity filled Gimli for his friend for the sad state of said friend's father, and he made to return to where he was supposed to be keeping watch when he heard a voice.

It was coming from the river.

And it was familiar.

"I cannot **believe** you made us fall in the river," it was saying. "So much for super-duper senses… aren't you supposed to send out sound waves so you can tell where you are?"

"I'm a vampire, not a bat, you ignorant cow," retorted another, male voice. It had an unusual accent, but the meaning of his words was clear enough. "And if you mention Dracula, I swear I'll drain you dry and dump your body for the pygmies to make a fetish from."

"I've already been their pincushion, what's a fetish between friends?" the female voice replied sourly. "Can we get out now? This is twice in one day I've been waterlogged. It's getting old."

"Well, at least you're clean," the man said nastily, and rhythmic splashes told Gimli he was swimming toward the shore. "Your pong was starting to make my nose bleed after a day tramping through the jungle. You sweat like a horse."

More splashes; the woman was heading for shore as well. "Women glow. I was glowing," she said at last, a little out of breath from her exertions.

"Well, you glow like a horse, then." The man hoisted his body from the water and shook himself like a dog. Then he stopped suddenly and sniffed the air, turning unerringly to where Gimli stood half-hidden in the tall grasses not ten feet away. "Oi, there's someone here. Someone short."

She extricated herself from the river. "Not another pygmy," she sighed tiredly. "I hate those little fuckers," she added, limping up to him. "If I ever— Gimli!" she exclaimed when she caught sight of him.

"Corinne," he gasped in reply, because she'd thrown her arms around him to hug him tightly enough to suffocate. She was also getting him all wet. "Stop. Stop now." 

"Sorry," she replied, stepping back and stumbling when her leg gave way beneath her. Gimli's hands came out to grasp her round the waist and hold her up. 

"Let's get you to the fire," he said, his voice gruff to hide his gladness at finding her, even if she were accompanied by a very strange man who now seemed to be petting the long leather garment he'd shrugged off moments before.

"Gladly," Corinne agreed, allowing him to assist her up the steep incline. At the top appeared a sleepy Legolas and his father, the former looking greatly surprised to see her and the latter, extremely satisfied. 

"I bow to your skills of perception, Master Dwarf," he told Gimli, smiling angelically, teeth and earcuff winking in the moonlight. Gimli only scowled; _accursed elves, were there but two that didn't make him long to murder them?_ He spared a glance for his friend, and thought of Galadriel, and slowly felt recede the urge to twist Thranduil's head off his body.

Legolas frowned and elbowed his way past his father to scoop Corinne into his arms. "You are injured?" he asked, beginning to carry her to the camp, but before she could reply, Buffy interrupted, her voice muzzy from sleep.

"You found her? Where is she? Is she—" Then **she** was interrupted. 

"Sodding hell," Spike grumbled, holding his duster up at arm's length and watching it drip onto the ground as he came over the rise of the bank. "This will never be the same," he declared mournfully. "Fifty years I've had it, and—"

He looked up then, and for the first time in nearly three decades laid eyes on the sight of one Buffy Summers. She stood before him, messy bed-head hair backlit by the fire behind her, and stared at him in complete, utter, poleaxed shock. 

"Spike?" she whispered, too softly for mortal ears to hear, and then to **his** utter shock, she was in his arms, hugging him fiercely. "Is it really you? You're not just some weird Powers-induced vision again, are you? Because with all the wiggy mind-games going on in this place, I wouldn't be surprised…"

Head whirling, he was intoxicated by the knowledge that the vice-grip around his ribcage was, indeed, that of Buffy. She was the only mortal he'd ever loved as a vampire, the Slayer he'd never been able to bring himself to kill, the person whose death he'd grieved for decades, and she wasn't making a lick of sense. 

Dimly, a memory came to him of what he'd thought was a dream just a few months after Dawn had left to join Buffy. Something about a cave, about convincing her to let go of the Poof and be happy … "Buffy," he murmured. Pulling back in his embrace, she gazed up at him and their eyes locked, held… a second seemed to stretch and lengthen, crystallizing and tightening.

"Ow," complained Corinne, shattering the moment as Legolas placed her on the ground with rather more force than was strictly required. 

Ignoring her, Legolas turned to his wife. "Will you not introduce us?" he asked, his voice taking on Thranduil's silken tones of menace. She pulled free of the vampire's embrace to cross her arms over her chest and glower at him.

Spike cocked his hip, managing to appear impossibly cool even whilst soaking wet. "This must be the old man," he commented, ostensibly to Corinne. "He's got that humorless married look about 'im, don't you think, pet?"

"I'm sore; come look at my butt and see if the wound is doing alright," she directed, completely ignoring his question. "And stop teasing him; if he doesn't gut you like a fish, his father will."

"Father?" Spike looked around; beside Buffy the group seemed to consist only of two similar-looking, handsome young men and the squat hairy chap they'd first seen down by the river. He cast the hairy one a glance of great doubt before meeting the eyes of the other young man. Tall and fit, he walked languidly around the fire, and met Spike's gaze with one of his own that managed to be both bored and challenging at the same time. In him, Spike recognized the kindred spirit of the overprotective parent, for hadn't he always felt the same way about the Nibblet?

He nodded briefly at that bloke, and turned his attention to the one he supposed was Buffy's husband. He was almost a carbon copy of the first, but with blue eyes instead of green, and an air of defiance that made his entire body quiver with tension. Possessive, this one, and Spike wondered how Buffy liked being hovered over, as she'd always been quite the independent chippie before she'd died. 

A catlike smirk curled the corners of his mouth, and he lifted his hands in mock surrender. "I cry peace, mate," he said, eyes shining with humour. "I've not come to steal your bride; she'd have nothing to do with me before her death, and I doubt she's any more inclined now." Then he looked at her and quirked his scarred brow suggestively; just as he expected, Buffy rolled her eyes and her husband seemed to swell with rage.

"Legolas, relax," she told him, her demeanor shifting instantly to loving and concerned spouse; _fascinating_, thought Spike. "He's just an old friend."

"I'm more than that, Slayer," Spike purred. "I'm the only vamp you were never able to best in a fight." 

"That's crap," she replied flatly, a glint coming into her eye. "There were dozens of times I could have taken you out, and you know it."

"Do I?" His words were soft, rebellious. "Then why didn't you?" When she didn't answer, he continued. "I think you just like to dance." Stepping back, ignoring how his wet boots squelched on the ground, he spread his arms wide. "Care to dance with me, Slayer?"

Buffy smiled at him, the slow feral smile she always wore when she was looking forward to a challenge, the smile he'd fallen in love with all those years ago, and her stance shifted marginally, becoming looser, more ready to spring. "I've learned a few new steps, Spike. Think you can keep up?"

Spike's borrowed blood sang through his veins, filling him with exhilaration. "Oh, I can keep up, Slayer."

He barely had time to deflect the tiny fist that flew at him with the force of a troll hammer, but he managed it and used her momentum to fling her past him, meaning to have Buffy land flat on her back so he could pounce. Instead, she twisted mid-air and landed on her hands and knees. He barely had time for a smirk before she launched herself at him, knocking him backwards over the sputtering fire—he felt the flames flick at his backside-- to pin him to the ground. Her hands came at him in a flurry of punches, some of which he blocked and some of which he allowed to hit just because he, in moments of perversity such as this, rather enjoyed the sudden shock and sting of pain such blows would bring.

There was triumph in her eyes, those glowing green-gold eyes that used to haunt his sleep and make him smoke endless numbers of cigarettes under that bloody tree outside her bedroom window. After her death, he'd smoked countless more in that very spot, trying to drown his grief in tobacco smoke and cheap whiskey as he stared up at her window and waited for the silhouette that would never come again, but it hadn't worked. Only time had solved it, that and the acceptance that she was gone, gone forever.

Except that she wasn't. She wasn't gone, she wasn't dead, and a mass of anguish twisted with relief roiled up from the depths of what he'd have called his soul, had he possessed one. Dropping his arms, he took a good solid punch in the face, then another, before she realized that not only was he not fighting back, he was shaking. 

"Spike?" she asked uncertainly as she stopped hitting him, frowning in puzzling when he shoved her off him and buried his face in his hands. "Spike?" 

"He missed you," Corinne said softly from where she stood leaning on Gimli. 

Buffy hesitantly put one arm around him, then the other, and drew his head to her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Spike," she whispered to him, at the same time seeking out Legolas with her eyes and begging him to understand, to not be angry or jealous as the vampire's arms came around to grip her tightly. 

"Reluctant as I am to interrupt this reunion," Thranduil said, his voice like velvet in the firelit night, "I feel compelled to tell you that there is evil in the air; we are not alone, nor safe."

"That's just me," Spike said with a hint of his usual balls-and-swagger comportment and grinned at Buffy, who sat back on her heels and grinned back, vastly relieved he was recovering. Cocky!Spike she could handle without a problem, but Needy!Weeping!Grief-stricken!Spike made her distinctly uncomfortable.

The elven king's mouth curled in a one-side smirk. "I think not," he answered, and in a single motion drew both daggers from their back-sheath, spun in a circle, and decapitated the discolored zombie that had been about to attack him from behind. Radagast frowned and muttered something about being in the middle of talking to Arwen, but swiftly raised his staff to counter the assault.

Buffy and Spike were on their feet before the zombie's head hit the ground, and when she saw the pitiable state of the vampire's weapon she tossed one of her swords to him. "Ta, luv," he said, and cleft in twain another zombie as it staggered into the clearing. "Ring around the schoolgirl!" he called happily, mood improving drastically now there were things to kill. Or, in the case of the already-dead zombies, dismember. 

The inhabitants of Arda exchanged puzzled glances as they defended themselves, but Buffy and Corinne seemed to know what he meant as Corinne limped hurriedly to the centre of the clearing and Buffy joined ranks with Spike to stand with their backs to her, keeping any of the zombies from reaching Corinne. Twigging, Gimli, Legolas, Radagast and Thranduil took position around her as well, and it was with almost embarrassing ease that they defeated all comers. To the surprise of all but Radagast himself, he fought not with magic, but with his staff itself, bashing quite effectively with its stout oaken heft.

The battle was somewhat slow, and more than a bit boring as zombies have little going for them besides their undead status, but what they lacked in excitement they made up for in sheer numbers. Hack and slash, hack and slash, for over an hour until the flow of adversaries slowed to a trickle and finally there were no more. 

When it was over and they all turned to grin in triumph at each other, Corinne's plaintive voice could be heard: "They were teal, too. Is that what's going to happen to me? Really not wanting to be a zombie. I have enough problems."

"Let's jump off that bridge when we come to it," Buffy said, pushing a stray wisp of hair off her sweat-sticky forehead. "For now, let's just say you're available in fashion colours, and let's leave it at that, 'kay?"

Ered Lithui = Ash Mountains, forming the northern border of Mordor. 


	26. Chapter 25

Author's Note: Here's where pure fiction deviates from ancient myth: I've had to create some of this stuff from my own warped brain rather than follow strict fact and history. Forgive me.

This chapter dedicated to all the lurkers in my Yahoo group; even if you don't say anything, the rest of us are glad you're out there!

Without, Part 25

The sun shone brightly the next morning. The birds sang, their gentle tunes wafting lightly on the air; the squirrels chirruped as they stocked their larders with nuts and the stream burbled merrily as it flowed by. A sweet breeze undulated through the blossoming trees, and fruit bowed their branches low. It was idyllic; it was perfection.

It might have been the bowels of hell and raining a plague of locusts for all the cheer in Elessar's group that day. 

One by one, as each awoke, they evidenced great distress over the perfectly clear memories they had of their actions the previous night. Haldir rose first; without a word, he strode off into the trees without looking back. Elessar stumbled over to Arwen and dropped to his knees before her, burying his face in her lap like a penitent and entreating her forgiveness. Boromir said little, just a muttered litany of "I'm sorry," to Dawn, but his eyes were haunted. Dawn herself only clutched at him, when she wasn't shooting anxious glances at Arwen, that is. 

And Arwen… she was calm. Perfectly, flawlessly, beautifully calm. It's easy to be calm, you see, when one has spent the better part of the night planning the utter decimation of one's foes. It was she who directed the others to pack up their meagre camp; it was she who declared they would now search for the missing Haldir; it was she who came between his knives and the fallen log he was systematically hewing into matchsticks and informed him it was time to continue their march. 

"They have found Corinne," she told them then. "She and one other. She has been wounded—" Haldir's eyes gained another layer of misery at this news— "but not badly, and will survive."

"Who is this other?" Boromir asked, ever distrustful of newcomers.  

"He is known to Dagnir, a vampire from her home world," Arwen replied. "He has protected Corinne, and treated her injury."

Dawn gasped sharply as wild hope flared within her, pushing aside the horror and embarrassment that had threatened to choke her since waking up. "Spike?" she asked, voice quavering. "Is it Spike?"

"I do not know his name, just that Dagnir trusts him, even if the others do not," Arwen said. "And Legolas is jealous; Dagnir and the vampire had a… warm reunion, Radagast tells me."

"She'd only be happy to see two vampires," Dawn reasoned to herself. "Angel or Spike, and Angel's dead, so it must be Spike!" Her voice rose in volume until by the end of the sentence she was practically shrieking. Joy and excitement filled her-- whatever was happening, Spike would fix it. He always had, sense of failure about Buffy's death aside. 

"It must be Spike," she repeated, smiling up into Boromir's face as they once more began to follow the path they'd been on since descending the mountain. He tried bravely to summon an answering smile, but it was rather shaky around the edges and she gave him a one-armed hug, knowing him to still be upset about… last night. 

As the hours passed, it became clear that there was an unspoken agreement to never mention it, ever again, but a fire was burning in their eyes, and a new determination tautened their nerves. 

Violated by Aker not once, but twice now, Haldir was nearly incandescent with a blind and barbaric fury. Almost thoroughly incapable of civil speech, Arwen had exiled him to the rear of the group and he now stomped along behind them, and woe betide any hapless flora or fauna that came near him: already he'd killed enough rabbits for both luncheon and dinner, and it was only mid-morning.

Radagast had contacted Arwen, demanding to know more about what had happened when she'd so distressedly begged for help, but she had refused to part with any information other than the bare minimum. "He says we must return to the mountain," she informed her group.

"Will we encounter once more the forces that have… manipulated us?" Elessar asked, his voice husky with apprehension.

"I hope not," Dawn said fervently. Boromir only gripped her hand more tightly. 

They walked. Once past the clearing where they'd nearly ravished each other the previous night and nothing seemed to possess or overwhelm them, they allowed themselves to relax marginally. Boromir actually ventured a tiny smile at his wife, and the rigid set to Arwen's shoulders shifted to a slightly less tense set. 

Only Haldir remained edgy, and so when the first arrow narrowly missed Elessar's head, was perfectly primed to turn and nock his own arrow in one smooth movement. "Sniper," he growled, crouching slightly as his grey eyes flew over the surrounding area. The meadow through which they travelled was ringed by trees over a half-mile away; only an elf would have been able to achieve such accuracy at such distance. Unless…

Faint laughter caught his attention; he saw by the way Arwen came alert that she'd heard it as well. A breeze sighed past him, causing the sleeve of his tunic to flutter, and the air around him shimmered for the barest moment. Was that the sound of…?

"Hooves," Boromir whispered, looked round at the others, his gaze sliding quickly off Haldir to rest on Elessar. "Did you hear hooves?"

Gondor's king nodded shortly, eyes scanning the grasses around them for some hint of what was happening. There was a flash of white and black and  brown behind Dawn, and they all whirled to face it, but it was gone. The sound of hoofbeats came from the right of Haldir, and they turned to it, but after the merest impression of something curving gracefully, there was nothing but the whispering wind before another arrow came at them, this time sinking into the dead-centre of Boromir's shield. 

"They but toy with us," he said, his voice tapering to a higher octave when something rushed by him and he shuffled quickly away from it. 

Haldir turned to face Elessar, eyes narrowed and lethal. "I am well and truly finished being the toy of Aker," he stated, and the next time the air blurred in his vicinity he loosed his own arrow at it. 

In a flash, there appeared a figure before them, facing away so all they could see was the extremely tall build and slender hips wrapped in some pale gauzy material. The head seemed bent low, as if bowed in sorrow. A thin, strappy jeweled armband tinkled merrily when the figure's hand came up and snatched Haldir's arrow from the air just before it would strike. 

It turned to face them, lifting its head proudly, and they saw that before them stood a female. The strap of her quiver lay between small bare breasts with chocolate-brown nipples, and she loosely held at her side a bow banded with many bright colours. The head of a gazelle rose gracefully from slim and muscular shoulders, crowned by a magnificent set of black antlers, their arc fluid as they curled back from her brow. The narrow face and elongated ears managed to convey a sense of alert malice as the mouth drew back in a surprisingly human smirk. 

"Satet," Dawn whispered in awe and fear from behind Boromir, clutching fistfuls of his overtunic as she peeped over his shoulder. "Patroness of archers. Oh, shit."

"You are gifted among elves," Satet addressed Haldir, her voice nowhere near human-sounding, seeming to consist more of scratchy raspings, "but how will you fare against a goddess?" She raised her bow, effortlessly nocking and sighting down an arrow at him.

"Haldir, do not," Elessar warned him, but the elf was beyond counsel at that point.

"I think the question, madam, is how you will fare against a march-warden," Haldir replied coolly, arms a blur of motion as he aimed his own bow at her. For a long, endless moment they stood there, arrow-points trained between the other's eyes, until some minute action of Haldir's, some infinitesimal movement, alerted her of his intention to shoot, and she loosed her arrow a thousandth of a second before he did his. 

Two things happened then; first, Satet's arrow seemed not so much to fly as much as simply materialize in the centre of Haldir's chest, and a crimson stain bloomed on his tunic. Second, Haldir's arrow embedded itself firmly into her throat, to her immense surprise. 

Dawn screamed and tried to run to him, but Boromir grabbed her and pressed her head against his shoulder. Arwen merely stood, tears coursing down her cheeks, and Elessar's hand flexed convulsively on the pommel of Andúril.

The goddess gasped the shaft of it in one hand and wrenched it free; immediately, the wound closed up and healed, flesh and fur knitting flawlessly. "Excellent," she told Haldir, who had fallen to his knees and was gasping for breath. "Truly formidable. Were you on the other side of this conflict, I would take you as my student."

"Were **you** on the other side of this conflict, I would not have to do this," Elessar gritted out, and charged her, Boromir but a second behind him while Arwen sniffled and readied her bow for a shot. 

Satet's legs seemed to morph, her knees to bend the other way and her feet to shorten into cloven hooves, and she sprang easily out of the way of her attackers, landing lightly a dozen yards away. Her eyes, dark and liquid, gazed upon them almost pityingly. "It is to my great displeasure that I must do this," Satet said, "for it is clear you are all beings of great courage."

Then she drew back her bowstring once more, and in lightning-quick succession shot each of them through the heart. Elessar yanked the missile from his chest, pulling it free with a sickening slurping sound, and continued to stride toward her but before he'd gone half the distance his injury conquered him, and he dropped heavily, Andúril glinting at his side in the bright sunlight. 

Boromir was next; the arrow meant for him pierced his shield as if it were paper, and in great surprise he stared down at the wound blossoming over him. He slumped over almost immediately, hand outstretched toward Dawn. The arrow meant for Arwen struck her slender body with such force that she was flung backwards a good ways, landing hard on her back. She did not move again.

Dawn was last, and tried desperately to avoid her death but Satet's speed was nothing short of miraculous, and as she tumbled to the ground her last thoughts were a jumble of images: Mercas, Boromir, Buffy, Joyce, Spike… she hoped they all knew how much she loved them. Forcing her eyes open, she turned her head and found Boromir looking in her direction, his eyes already beginning to glaze over. As she watched, the light went out of them. Then her own vision failed her, and an overwhelming sense of failure and anguish assailed her. _I'm sorry, Buffy_, she thought. _I'm sorry_.

She never saw the green light that appeared and grew, stretching and spreading, as her life's blood flowed out of her onto the fragrant meadow grasses.

***

Buffy trudged along wearily at Legolas' side. Once the zombies had attacked the previous night, they'd had no rest at all: slew after slew of all manner of oogly-boogly had assaulted them, from huge ent-like things to possessed cultists with huge scythes to frogs the size of hippos that spat great wads of slime for twenty feet with surprising accuracy, as Gimli's goo-caked beard would attest. 

Corinne had insisted they head west. "Ta-tenen lies below Mertseger, the mountain, at the center of the land of the dead," she told them. "To the north is heaven, to the south is hell. In the west lies tundra, and east is where you find the jungle." She waved her arm encompass their surroundings. "We're in the east, and have to head west until we reach the middle. And we need to tell the others to head back to Mertseger, as well."

Radagast had been vastly unsettled since his last contact with Arwen. She had contacted him, panicked, for advice when the others of her party had been, as she put it, 'enspelled' but he hadn't heard from her since. Closing his eyes, both hands gripping the staff he planted firmly on the ground, he forced a connection to her. Long moments he spent communicating with her until at last he nodded grimly.

"Arwen will not tell me what has happened," he told them, his pace quicker than before as he was now eager to meet up with Elessar's group. "But I gather it has caused… great unease and discomfort between them; Aker has tried to foment trouble between them, to break friendships and rupture alliances. He has nearly succeeded." His brown eyes flicked over Corinne as if pondering what he should say next. "The elf has suffered in particular, she said, but I know not how."

Before, she would have collapsed, would have wept and wailed and freaked out in general. Now, she only tightened her lips and suggested that they hurry. And so they hurried. To pass the time, Legolas would occasionally sing as was his wont, and sometimes Thranduil would join his voice to his son's. After Spike's initial disbelief ("They're **singing**? What's next, the Rockettes? I don't think I'll survive seeing them do the high kicks") was overcome by the undeniable fact that the monarchy of Mirkwood as a group had exceptionally fine musical talents, they settled into a brisk march, halted only when confronted with more things to kill.

Corinne had to push herself hard to keep up with their pace and tried to ignore what was at first discomfort and eventually became outright pain and then agony in her leg and backside, but finally could go on no longer. "Spike, could you take a look at it for me? In private?" She forced a grin onto her tired face for the others. "He's already withstood the horror that is my butt; no need to mentally scar the rest of you."

Going behind a tree, she peeled off her jeans and nearly collapsed to the ground, uncaring if it were Spike or more of those scythe-weilding cultists who found her. He circled the tree and dropped to his knees, placing one cool hand on the swollen area of the wound. 

She hissed in relief. "That feels **awesome**," she mumbled. "Can you just do that forever?"

"'Fraid not, pet," he replied, fingertips digging deeper into her flesh as he sought to located the area of infection. Where he'd fed last time seemed to be clear, but the rest of the perimeter of the wound was not. "Why so adamant about it being just the two of us?"

"Do you really think the rest of them would be pleased to hear exactly how you've been tending me?" she asked quietly. "Buffy trusts you, but the others have spent their lives killing things like you. They're not convinced you're safe. And Legolas is just **waiting** for a reason to stake you, I'm sure."

He smirked. "Yeah, he's fun to tease, that one."

"I don't suggest you tease him for long; I wasn't joking when I said he'd gut you like a fish. And Buffy's devoted to him; she won't like it if you upset him."

Something flickered in his eyes then, as if a spark guttered and died. "Right," he murmured, then craned his head this way and that, surveying her injury. "Best to get on with this, right? Brace yourself," and switched to game face. Once the punctures were made, just like before, black and poisoned blood streamed out. 

"Ew," Corinne commented, looking over her shoulder at the process. Spike kneaded her buttock to coax as much of the foul stuff out as possible, then with a jaunty grin lowered his mouth to her. This time she was awake for it, and switched immediately to scholar mode to document what was happening. 

Point #1: Spike's hands, gripping her thigh, were icy-cold, as were his lips. They felt heavenly against her abused body.

Point #2: Something about what he was doing—immortal vampiric properties inherent in his saliva, perhaps?—was very cleansing, because she could actually feel the injured area healing as he worked. 

Point #3: The pull of his mouth on her was soothing in its rhythmic pulsing, lulling her gently to sleep.

It was the last thing she thought before drifting off. Spike took no special care to keep from waking her, but she continued to sleep after he'd redressed her and hauled her into his arms. "She passed out," he told the others in response to their concerned faces as he rounded the tree and carried her toward them. Buffy squinted suspiciously at him, but he hadn't survived being Angelus' grandchilde for so long by being an inferior liar; his performance was flawless and soon they were on their way once more, Corinne draped piggy-back over him. 

Spike originally thought it would be a healing sleep; he didn't count on her body being damaged enough to be unconscious for almost an entire day. When he tired of hauling Corinne, Legolas and Buffy took turns. When the time came to fight (and it came often) they plunked her onto the ground and encircled her, fighting back-to-back in a surprisingly effective manner. 

Spike knew his fighting methods were unusual, even alarming, to the men (or whatever these fellows were… elves, a dwarf, and some surly bloke who called himself a Maia, whatever that was): more often than not, he'd discard his weapon and fling himself joyfully into the fray using only fists and fangs. Patrols in LA had been getting stale lately, and in retrospect it wasn't at all surprising that, near perishing from boredom, he'd allowed that Polgara to have its one lucky day.

"This place is bloody weird," he commented to no one in particular, exhilarated from the latest bloodshed, "but you can't say it's dull." It seemed to be high praise coming from him. 

The jungle thinned the further west they went, until they were tromping through a rather barren and flat marshy area. Thranduil bid the last of the trees a fond farewell and joined the rest of them splooshing through the swamp. After an hour, Gimli commented that it was the longest they'd gone without an attack since meeting up with Corinne and Spike. 

"This is not to your relief, Master Dwarf?" Thranduil asked. "Perhaps you would prefer a situation somewhat more dire?"

Spike groaned, and Buffy put her hand to her forehead; Thranduil arched a brow in the closest gesture he would give to registering confusion. "You just had to say it," Buffy complained. "Don't you **know** that whenever you say something like that, like 'Could be worse, this could happen' it's going to happen?"

Spike nodded firmly. "That's how the schoolgirl and I ended up in the bloody jungle," he chimed in, "stupid sod that I am."

Buffy sighed heavily. "I shudder to think what disaster we'll have to deal with now," she muttered, shooting her father-in-law a rather disgruntled glance. He shot Legolas a look that clearly said, 'Your wife is a fruitcake' but Legolas wasn't paying attention to them; his focus was, instead, upon a pinpoint of light in the distance.

A green, glowing pinpoint, to be exact. "Dawn's blood has been spilt," he said quietly, eyes flying to his wife. In a heartbeat, she was racing through the swamp toward it, the others pelting after her.

"Oh fuck, oh fuck," she gasped and dove through it without hesitation as soon as she was close enough. Legolas and Gimli followed her not a moment later, their faces grave, and Spike jumped in as well, Corinne awake after their panicked run and clutching hard at his shoulders. 

"It does not seem entirely wise to me, jumping through the portal when we know not where it leads," Thranduil commented, but Radagast kicked him hard in the backside, sending him flying into the portal before stepping through himself.


	27. Chapter 26

Without, Part 26

Reset 

The sun shone brightly the next morning. The birds sang, their gentle tunes wafting lightly on the air; the squirrels chirruped as they stocked their larders with nuts and the stream burbled merrily as it flowed by. A sweet breeze undulated through the blossoming trees, and fruit bowed their branches low. It was idyllic; it was perfection.

It might have been the bowels of hell and raining a plague of locusts for all the cheer in Elessar's group that day. 

One by one, as each awoke, they evidenced great distress over the perfectly clear memories they had of their actions the previous night. Haldir rose first; without a word, he strode off into the trees without looking back. Elessar stumbled over to Arwen and dropped to his knees before her, burying his face in her lap like a penitent and entreating her forgiveness. Boromir said little, just a muttered litany of "I'm sorry," to Dawn, but his eyes were haunted. Dawn herself only clutched at him, when she wasn't shooting anxious glances at Arwen, that is. 

And Arwen… she was calm. Perfectly, flawlessly, beautifully calm. It's easy to be calm, you see, when one has spent the better part of the night planning the utter decimation of one's foes. It was she who directed the others to pack up their meagre camp; it was she who declared they would now search for the missing Haldir; it was she who came between his knives and the fallen log he was systematically hewing into matchsticks and informed him it was time to continue their march. 

"They have found Corinne," she told them then. "She and one other. She has been wounded—" Haldir's eyes gained another layer of misery at this news— "but not badly, and will survive."

"Who is this other?" Boromir asked, ever distrustful of newcomers.  

"He is known to Dagnir, a vampire from her home world," Arwen replied. "He has protected Corinne, and treated her injury."

Dawn gasped sharply as wild hope flared within her, pushing aside the horror and embarrassment that had threatened to choke her since waking up. "Spike?" she asked, voice quavering. "Is it Spike?"

"I do not know his name, just that Dagnir trusts him, even if the others do not," Arwen said. "And Legolas is jealous; Dagnir and the vampire had a… warm reunion, Radagast tells me."

"She'd only be happy to see two vampires," Dawn reasoned to herself. "Angel or Spike, and Angel's dead, so it must be Spike!" Her voice rose in volume until by the end of the sentence she was practically shrieking. Joy and excitement filled her-- whatever was happening, Spike would fix it. He always had, sense of failure about Buffy's death aside. 

"It must be Spike," she repeated, smiling up into Boromir's face as they once more began to follow the path they'd been on since descending the mountain. He tried bravely to summon an answering smile, but it was rather shaky around the edges and she gave him a one-armed hug, knowing him to still be upset about… last night. 

As the hours passed, it became clear that there was an unspoken agreement to never mention it, ever again, but a fire was burning in their eyes, and a new determination tautened their nerves. 

Violated by Aker not once, but twice now, Haldir was nearly incandescent with a blind and barbaric fury. Almost thoroughly incapable of civil speech, Arwen had exiled him to the rear of the group and he now stomped along behind them, and woe betide any hapless flora or fauna that came near him: already he'd killed enough rabbits for both luncheon and dinner, and it was only mid-morning.

Radagast had contacted Arwen, demanding to know more about what had happened when she'd so distressedly begged for help, but she had refused to part with any information other than the bare minimum. "He says we must return to the mountain," she informed her group.

"Will we encounter once more the forces that have… manipulated us?" Elessar asked, his voice husky with apprehension.

"I hope not," Dawn said fervently. Boromir only gripped her hand more tightly. 

They walked. Once past the clearing where they'd nearly ravished each other the previous night and nothing seemed to possess or overwhelm them, they allowed themselves to relax marginally. Boromir actually ventured a tiny smile at his wife, and the rigid set to Arwen's shoulders shifted to a slightly less tense set. 

Only Haldir remained edgy, and so when the first arrow narrowly missed Elessar's head, was perfectly primed to turn and nock his own arrow in one smooth movement. "Sniper," he growled, crouching slightly as his grey eyes flew over the surrounding area. The meadow through which they travelled was ringed by trees over a half-mile away; only an elf would have been able to achieve such accuracy at such distance. Unless…

Faint laughter caught his attention; he saw by the way Arwen came alert that she'd heard it as well. A breeze sighed past him, causing the sleeve of his tunic to flutter, and the air around him shimmered for the barest moment. Was that the sound of…?

"Hooves," Boromir whispered, looked round at the others, his gaze sliding quickly off Haldir to rest on Elessar. "Did you hear hooves?"

Gondor's king nodded shortly, eyes scanning the grasses around them for some hint of what was happening. There was a flash of white and black and  brown behind Dawn, and they all whirled to face it, but it was gone. The sound of hoofbeats came from the right of Haldir, and they turned to it, but after the merest impression of something curving gracefully, there was nothing but the whispering wind before another arrow came at them, this time sinking into the dead-centre of Boromir's shield. 

"They but toy with us," he said, his voice tapering to a higher octave when something rushed by him and he shuffled quickly away from it. 

Haldir turned to face Elessar, eyes narrowed and lethal. "I am well and truly finished being the toy of Aker," he stated, and the next time the air blurred in his vicinity he loosed his own arrow at it. 

In a flash, there appeared a figure before them, facing away so all they could see was the extremely tall build and slender hips wrapped in some pale gauzy material. The head seemed bent low, as if bowed in sorrow. A thin, strappy jeweled armband tinkled merrily when the figure's hand came up and snatched Haldir's arrow from the air just before it would strike. 

It turned to face them, lifting its head proudly, and they saw that before them stood a female. The strap of her quiver lay between small bare breasts with chocolate-brown nipples, and she loosely held at her side a bow banded with many bright colours. The head of a gazelle rose gracefully from slim and muscular shoulders, crowned by a magnificent set of black antlers, their arc fluid as they curled back from her brow. The narrow face and elongated ears managed to convey a sense of alert malice as the mouth drew back in a surprisingly human smirk. 

"Satet," Dawn whispered in awe and fear from behind Boromir, clutching fistfuls of his overtunic as she peeped over his shoulder. "Patroness of archers. Oh, shit."

"You are gifted among elves," Satet addressed Haldir, her voice nowhere near human-sounding, seeming to consist more of scratchy raspings, "but how will you fare against a goddess?" She raised her bow, effortlessly nocking and sighting down an arrow at him.

"Haldir, do not," Elessar warned him, but the elf was beyond counsel at that point.

"I think the question, madam, is how you will fare against a march-warden," Haldir replied coolly, arms a blur of motion as he aimed his own bow at her. For a long, endless moment they stood there, arrow-points trained between the other's eyes, until the twang of a third bowstring drew the attention of both. Satet whirled to aim at Arwen, but the elleth's arrow struck her in the joint of her shoulder, causing her bow to drop from numbing fingers.

"Bold," Satet said admiringly, and removed the arrow from her flesh. Before their eyes, it healed good as new, and Satet flexed her fingers experimentally to test their recovery. "But I am bolder." She motioned to her bow and it flew up from the ground to fit itself into her hand, and quicker than the eye could see, fired off a shot at Arwen. 

"No," Elessar cried hoarsely, and tried to put himself between the missile and his wife, but Satet's speed could not be beaten—the arrow struck Arwen's slender body with such force that she was flung backwards a good ways, landing hard on her back. She did not move again.

Another arrow struck Satet, this time in the throat—Haldir's. As she was removing it, Elessar turned with a feral gleam of rage in his eyes and sprang at her, Andúril held aloft for a mighty killing blow,  Boromir and and Dawn right behind him. 

Satet's legs seemed to morph, her knees to bend the other way and her feet to shorten into cloven hooves, and she sprang easily out of the way of her attackers, landing lightly a dozen yards away. Her eyes, dark and liquid, gazed upon them almost pityingly. "It is to my great displeasure that I must do this," Satet said, "for it is clear you are all beings of great courage."

Boromir groped frantically for Dawn, thrusting her behind him, and took the arrow meant for her as well as his own. They pierced him through the midriff and chest with such force they emerged from his back, and one punctured Dawn's shoulder. Skewered together so, both tumbled to the ground as a green pinpoint of energy began to grow above them. 

"Intriguing," Satet rasped at the sight, springing effortlessly away from Elessar when he charged her, and firing off an arrow in mid-leap that struck him directly between the clavicles. He halted as suddenly as if he'd struck a wall, dropping heavily to the ground, and Haldir was alone.

He matched her strike at Elessar with one of his own, firing repeatedly and with perfect accuracy as Satet leapt about on her gazelle's legs, anticipating her movements and hitting his target each time; by the time he was out of arrows, he'd got her in each limb, the throat, chest, belly, and pubis, but each time the goddess gasped the shaft of the arrow in one hand and wrenched it free; immediately, the wound closed up and healed, flesh and fur knitting flawlessly. 

"Excellent," she told Haldir when he dropped his now-useless bow and unsheathed his daggers. "Truly formidable. Were you on the other side of this conflict, I would take you as my student." She took a step forward on her hooves and gazed speculatively at him. "That is still a possibility."

"Were you on the other side of this conflict, I would be honoured," he ground out. "But as it is, you must kill me, for never shall I join with you and your foul master in taking Aman."

Satet tilted her bestial head to one side, surveying him closely. "A pity," she said at last, and nocked another arrow, but instead of aiming it at him, she spun and let it fly toward the body that hurtled from the green portal that had grown while they'd spoken. 

"Ow," said Buffy, looking down at the arrow protruding from her stomach. Eyes searching her surroundings, she saw Haldir staring at her, his face anguished. "I hate being gut-shot." She staggered forward a few steps before falling to the ground. "Dawnie," she murmured, managing to touch her sister's cheek before dying.

"Dagnir!" howled Gimli as he burst from the portal and saw her prostrate form on the trampled grass; he barely managed to fling his axe at Satet before her arrow lodged in his groin. Legolas said nothing, but his face was a beautiful, terrible thing as he began to empty his quiver into the strange being standing before them. With a rather equine laugh, Satet began to bound about again, almost dancing as she picked her way delicately through the growing number of strewn bodies. 

Spike hurtled out into the meadow, took one look at Buffy's lifeless body, and let out a fearsome howl. Dumping Corinne back off him, he flung himself with dizzying speed toward Satet, nimbly dodging the arrows with which Legolas and now Thranduil pummeled her, and leapt onto her. Changing to game-face in mid-leap, he sank his fangs past her fur into her throat and clung limpet-like as she strove to free herself of him. 

Radagast raised his staff and began muttering in a low voice. The ground under Satet's feet began to rumble, and then in a rush surged upward to encase her from the waist down in what looked like brown cement. The meadow's thick grasses seemed to come alive and began to undulate and creep around her until her arms were firmly trapped against her sides. Spike released her and staggered back, trying desperately to regain his footing. Corinne came cautiously forward and pulled his arm around her shoulder to brace him as those left alive encircled her, weapons at the ready.

Haldir pushed his way to her and placed his blades against her throat. Staring deeply into her eyes, he said, "Save them."

The goddess struggled against her bonds. "I cannot," she gasped as Radagast made the grasses squeeze her more tightly. "Naught I can do."

"She lies," Thranduil stated flatly. He stood to the side, arrow trained smack between her eyes, arms rock-solid as he held the bow drawn. 

"Anything can happen here," Haldir said. "The impossible is possible in this land; make it so, goddess, else you will find yourself in pieces." He pressed his daggers closer; all it needed was a single flick of his wrists and her head would be separated from her body.

Satet closed her eyes a moment, and Radagast's face sharpened. "She speaks to Aker," he muttered.

When she opened her eyes again, there was fear in them. "Aker agrees you shall have another chance against me, as many as you need," she murmured breathlessly. "He feels this is great sport, watching you die time and again."

"Game?" Spike demanded from where he knelt by Buffy's and Dawn's bodies. "This was just a game to him?"

"I want to remember," Haldir demanded, and this time his blades drew thin lines of scarlet that stained the buff-coloured fur of Satet's throat. "I want to remember."

"And so you shall," she replied, "for you are worthy of my favour." The expression in her eyes changed to regret. "A pity, elf," she told him. "Your ruthlessness would have made you a fine student… even consort. It is not yet too late… you are sure? You are determined to fight me, rather than join me? For I would make you a god."

A muscle flickered in Haldir's jaw. "I am sure," he replied, and with a jerk, decapitated her.

***

Reset 

They walked. Once past the clearing where they'd nearly ravished each other the previous night and nothing seemed to possess or overwhelm them, they allowed themselves to relax marginally. Boromir actually ventured a tiny smile at his wife, and the rigid set to Arwen's shoulders shifted to a slightly less tense set. 

Only Haldir remained edgy, and so when the first arrow narrowly missed Elessar's head, was perfectly primed to turn and nock his own arrow in one smooth movement. "Sniper," he growled, crouching slightly as his grey eyes flew over the surrounding area. The meadow through which they travelled was ringed by trees over a half-mile away; only an elf would have been able to achieve such accuracy at such distance. Unless…

Faint laughter caught his attention; he saw by the way Arwen came alert that she'd heard it as well. A breeze sighed past him, causing the sleeve of his tunic to flutter, and the air around him shimmered for the barest moment. Was that the sound of…?

"Hooves," Boromir whispered, looked round at the others, his gaze sliding quickly off Haldir to rest on Elessar. "Did you hear hooves?"

Gondor's king nodded shortly, eyes scanning the grasses around them for some hint of what was happening. There was a flash of white and black and  brown behind Dawn, and they all whirled to face it, but it was gone. The sound of hoofbeats came from the right of Haldir, and they turned to it, but after the merest impression of something curving gracefully, there was nothing but the whispering wind before another arrow came at them, this time sinking into the dead-centre of Boromir's shield. 

"They but toy with us," he said, his voice tapering to a higher octave when something rushed by him and he shuffled quickly away from it. 

Haldir turned to face Elessar, eyes narrowed and lethal. "I am well and truly finished being the toy of Aker," he stated, and grabbed Dawn's wrist. 

Boromir started in alarm, but something in Haldir's face halted him. "What are you doing?" he settled for demanding.

"What needs to be done," Haldir replied. Pushing back Dawn's sleeve, he drew blood from her forearm with the point of his arrow and smiled viciously when a portal began to expand in the air where the blood dripped. "The others will come; between us, we shall defeat her."

Elessar frowned. "Defeat whom?" he asked. "How is it you know these things?"

Haldir released Dawn and turned to where he knew Satet would appear. "Another time, I will tell you, Elessar," he answered the king. "If we survive." With a sigh, he fired his bow, and Satet materialized to snatch the arrow from the air. 

"You are gifted among elves," Satet addressed Haldir, her voice nowhere near human-sounding, seeming to consist more of scratchy raspings, "but how will you fare against a goddess?" She raised her bow, effortlessly nocking and sighting down an arrow at him.

"Haldir, do not," Elessar warned him, but the elf was beyond counsel at that point.

"I think the question, madam, is how you will fare against a Slayer," Haldir replied coolly, arms a blur of motion as he aimed his own bow at her. At his words, her eyes widened in alarm and a tiny part of his brain noted it; what about a Slayer could give a goddess such pause? For a long, endless moment they stood there, arrow-points trained between the other's eyes, until Buffy tumbled from the portal. 


	28. Chapter 27

Author's Note: written whilst under the influence of about 4 gallons of cold medicine; I can barely tell which way the gravity in my house is working at this point. Good for when you're shooting for surreality, but not so good when aiming for clarity. Please let me know if it's all disjointed and wacky. 

Have taken **immense** licence with the Kemetic gods and assigned traits to them that have little to no basis in reality. Please, Her-Wer, don't hit me with a bolt of lightning. 

Without, Chapter 27

Thousands of years Satet had served The One, Netjer; thousands of years She had followed where Netjer led, and She was still amazed at Its startling idiocy where competent alliances were concerned.

When the fell creature, banished millennia before by the inhabitants of this Arda, had contacted Netjer pleading for a partnership, most of Its children, the Netjeru, had counseled against it. This Melkor was an unknown entity, and Heka, god of magic and of persuasive speech, had seen in him a kindred spirit, and so warned His ruler. 

But Netjer fell prey to his sweet words, and would not be swayed. Melkor would have the assistance he needed. 

What the Netjeru had not counted on was that the gods of this world would be sage beings themselves, well capable of making their own alliances. One with a group of deities called the Powers That Be was particularly fruitful. They arranged for champions of the light to be sent to Arda, to help the Valar's own children battle Melkor and the Netjeru. 

The Powers' first champion, a Slayer, was sent when her time in her own world was finished. It had not been foretold for her to join with one of Arda's finest warriors and befriend several more, but the Valar certainly weren't going to complain—they were great believers in rewarding hard work. 

Clever, too—as soon as they learned that the first champion's sister was none other than the Key itself, they entreated the Powers to have her/it sent to Arda as well. Only too happy to get it/her out of their celestial hair, the Key was chivvied along accordingly. No one expected her/it to join with another of Arda's finest warriors, let alone to produce a child from their union, but the Valar certainly weren't going to complain, for the same reason listed above.

The second champion, another Slayer, was sent on after her death, but as this one had been somewhat problematic whilst alive, she'd been plunked right in the middle of the Valar themselves for "attitude readjustment". Her time of confinement was coming to an end, and when the Valar were satisfied with her, there were plans to send her to Arda to meet up with the other champions. In her case, it **was** planned that she would form a connection with a warrior of Middle-Earth, but knowing this one, she'd fight it the whole way out of sheer perversity. 

It was too late for the Netjeru to do anything about the first champion and the Key; what was done, was done. But the second champion, the volatile one… ah, that destiny was not yet set in stone. 

A plan was hatched. The brainchild of Sehkmet, goddess of war, it involved a plot so complicated that the mere thinking of it caused Satet a splitting migraine—and in one of the Netjeru, a migraine could last a century or more. Satet shook Her gazelle's head in dismay… Sehkmet was always full of devious plans, but She'd also been fooled into thinking that beer stained red with pomegranate juice was blood. Not the pointiest arrow in the quiver, was Sehkmet.

Said plot involved preventing the second champion from being able to pass from Aman to Arda, and when passages were to be blocked, Aker was your man. So to speak. Thrilled to be called into service, as for millennia all He'd been doing was granting wishes for those foolish enough to employ His Weshem-ib and thus funnel their life-energy to Him, Aker needed but one more sucker, and he'd have the power to rupture the One Path between Arda and Aman.

What He hadn't counted on was the Powers sneaking another champion into the mix when the Netjeru weren't looking, one whom none would have suspected to be a threat: a scholar whose knowledge of the Netjeru was daunting in its scope and magnitude. Blissfully ignorant that His latest victim was not merely a sad rube trying to obtain a distant dream, Aker had sent Corinne Williams to meet with the very people who she never should have been paired with, the very people who could be the downfall of the goal Aker was trying to procure. Never let it be said that the Powers didn't enjoy a good joke every millennia or so.

Aker had tried to destroy the scholar when she'd had the cheek to destroy his Weshem-ib, but Seshat had rescued the woman and given her the choice of serving Her, and merely set her outside the haven of the library when she refused. Satet smirked; Seshat had always been so damned sentimental of Her followers. Her protection of the scholar had allowed the Powers to deposit the fourth champion, the vampire, in Aker's realm itself and keep the woman alive.

The others had come to Aker's realm to save her, something few had expected. As far as the archery goddess could tell, there was little of significance about the woman, quite unlike that magnificent elf. Ah, now there was a minion worth having… his skill with the bow was impressive, but only a portion of his attraction for Her... he was so intense, so upright, so stalwart. It would have been delicious to continue their little game, to whittle away at him over and over until in desperation he accepted Her offer, if only to end the torment of seeing his companions killed time and again. As a token of her favour, Satet allowed him to remember what had gone before. She hoped he would appreciate it, as it would not come again. The Netjeru were not known for their mercy (aside from silly Seshat, that is).

And so, as the cycle repeated itself again, Satet found herself anticipating the upcoming confrontation a trifle breathlessly. It had been long since she'd been so challenged, and she was greatly invigorated by it. 

It was time. In her formless state, she could see the determination writ large on the elf's noble features as he used the Key to create a portal, summoning the others, and felt a illogical pang of hope for him. Foolish, yes, but gods were supposed to be impetuous. She squared her shoulders and prepared to reveal Herself. 

***

Reset 

Buffy tumbled through the portal, and Haldir deflected Satet's arrow with his own, shattering it into a hundred pieces. Taking their cue from him, Elessar and Arwen began not to shoot at the goddess, but at the missiles she was aiming at them all. 

"I remember too, elf," the goddess hissed at Haldir, eyes alight with the rage of a scorned female as She fired at them, hands moving so quickly they were just blurs. "I remember, and my quiver never depletes," Satet exulted. "What shall you do when yours are empty?"

"Then we'll just have to kick your ass without benefit of artillery," Buffy told her calmly, and launched into a series of back flips that allowed her to miss the back-and-forth flurries of arrows while bringing her ever-closer to the goddess. Thus were Legolas and Gimli able to exit the portal without undue danger, and Legolas joined his skills to that of the other archers, destroying Satet's missiles before they could hit Buffy or anyone else.

"Haldir knows more than he's letting on," Dawn shouted from behind Boromir, peeping over his shoulder. 

"Doesn't he always?" Buffy quipped, and rolled out of a somersault with fist cocked, planting it right between Satet's eyes. Reeling back, the goddess was hard-pressed to stay upright, but managed to gain her footing and spring away from the Slayer just before she could land another blow.

Then Spike jogged out onto the meadow, and finding a battle already engaged, dumped Corinne off his back. "Oi, short stuff!" he shouted at Gimli. "Come watch the schoolgirl." Gimli glowered but trotted over to place himself between Corinne and the goddess.

Dawn's head whipped around to him. "Spike?" she shrieked with joy.

"Hey, Nibblet," he greeted her casually as he sped by, borrowed sword already in his hand. "Ready, Slayer?"

"Always," she replied in that deadly-serious voice that always sent chills down his spine. The moment the others stopped shooting, they launched themselves at Satet in a classic pincer attack, joined shortly by Elessar with Andúril bared, Legolas with his daggers, and Boromir and Dawn coming forward at last. 

Reset 

Satet gave a high-pitched giggle and her legs altered to gazelle's hindquarters; she sprang away with a laugh and came down on the other side of the portal. Thranduil pitched from it at that moment and, sensing something ominous nearby, twisted in mid-air to sink one of his knives hilt-deep into her belly before landing hard on the ground.

Furious, Satet jerked free the dagger and flung it at him; he dodged it neatly and instead plucked it from the air, slashing at her. Her gazelle-legs tensed, preparing to leap, but Radagast fell from the portal and slammed into her.

She staggered back a ways, ears twitching angrily, and reached for her bow only to find Thranduil had snatched it up as he'd regained his feet and now stood a good dozen paces away, examining it closely. "An exceptional instrument," he commented, turning to his son. "What say you to the irony of attacking the creature with its own weapon, Greenleaf?"

Legolas caught the bow Thranduil threw to him. "Ever have I been fond of irony, _Ada_, as well you know," he replied coolly, and sent an arrow right between her eyes. 

Reset 

"Game?" Spike demanded. "This was just a game to him?"

Unacceptable," Haldir demanded, and this time his blades drew thin lines of scarlet that stained the buff-coloured fur of Satet's throat. "Help us; tell us how we can end this."

Satet stared at him a long moment, elf and goddess locked in a battle of wills, before she slumped in defeat. "Each of you brings something unique," she said at last, her raspy voice immeasurably sad. "The two newcomers must be first, and employ their strengths. Only then will you succeed against a god."

She turned then toward Corinne. "You, scholar. I give you impetus to riddle my words… Defeat me, else there be no cure for your affliction. The vampire's ministrations shall not stave off death for much longer."

After this extraordinary statement, Satet turned once more to Haldir and gave a narrow smile. "And now, elf?"

A muscle flickered in Haldir's jaw, and with a jerk, he decapitated her.

Reset 

Corinne remembered. She remembered Satet's words to her, and puzzled over them until she thought her head would split. Over and over the scene played out, in endless variations, and the increasing weariness in Haldir's eyes as they failed time and again made her ache on his behalf. She had figured out that Spike was one of the newcomers, but who was the second? Thranduil, for joining the rescue mission at the eleventh hour? She'd finagled it several times so Spike and Thranduil were the first out of the portal, but that had ended just as badly as all the other times. 

Maybe she was all wrong-headed about it, as Spike would say… whispering into his ear, she told him what she knew and asked for his opinion. In response, the eyes he turned to her were both gimlet and frustrated.

"You know, for someone who's supposed to be a scholar, you're about as perceptive as a bag of hammers," he said sourly, dumping her off his back and glaring. 

"What's going on?" Buffy asked mildly, having become used to periodic squabbles between Spike and Corinne over the past day. 

"Oh, nothing," Spike said airily. "Miss Thick-as-a-Brick here just now decided to get some input from yours truly on an… academic matter. And it only took our horrible deaths repeating-- how many times, luv?"

"Thirty-seven," Corinne answered sullenly. "That's just counting how many since I've been able to remember it… I think it's happened a lot more than that. Haldir was…"

"Ok, really wanting to jump on the clue-wagon, here," Buffy interjected. "Splainy in simple terms even a blonde can understand?" Ignoring Thranduil's expression of deep insult, she listened while Corinne tried to elaborate on what little she understood of the whole thing.

"It seems fairly obvious that the two newcomers to our world are Spike and Corinne," Gimli said in his my-patience-is-running-out-when-can-I-kill-something tone. "We must identify their unique skills and formulate a plan around them."

Everyone turned to him in suprise. The dwarf merely raised a brow so aloof even Thranduil would have been hard-pressed to out-snoot it. "Let us begin," he told them magnanimously, and so they did.

_An hour later_

The others were still squabbling about their parts in the plan, most notably Radagast who felt he should go first instead of Spike, the sooner to do his earthen-prison move, but Legolas wasn't paying attention to them; his focus was, instead, upon a pinpoint of light in the distance.

A green, glowing pinpoint, to be exact. "Dawn's blood has been spilt," he said quietly, eyes flying to his wife. In a heartbeat, she was racing through the swamp toward it, the others pelting after her. Spike tossed Corinne so she fell through in a baseball slide, and the arrow Satet sent her way zoomed harmlessly over her head. 

"Hi!" she greeted the other group cheerfully. "Don't mind me, just distract her, okay?" All but Haldir returned to their attack; his eyes burned like coals as they examined her.

"You are teal," he accused.

 "I'm fine," she assured him. "Fight now, mocking of Corinne later." With a brief nod, he turned away.

Scuttling low on the ground, she made her way behind them and began giving them directions. "We need to distract her from the portal, so the others can come through safely. Also, getting her back to the portal would be ideal."

And so they continued, the goddess never realizing She was being herded in a particular direction. At one point, after Haldir scored an especially choice shot under Her jaw, She sighed and slapped one hand to Her hip while the other removed the arrow, waving it around as She gesticulated. "Have none of you yet learnt that arrows do not harm me?" Satet turned to Haldir. "I had thought you more canny than this." Her tone was exasperated, that of a teacher to a student who continues to make stupid mistakes.

"I'll give you canny," Spike said from behind, and leapt onto Her back. Changing to game-face in mid-leap, he sank his fangs past Her fur into Her throat and clung limpet-like as She strove to free Herself of him. 

"Spike!" cried Dawn joyfully, and he somehow managed to grin at her around his mouthful of goddess, freeing his grip round Her neck for a moment to wave. She sprang away in a fury, and Spike found himself actually riding Her around the meadow as She bucked and twisted in an attempt to dislodge him. At one point he let out a classic bronco-buster whoop, bringing some much-needed laughter to the serious bunch.

Then came Radagast, staff already upraised, and muttering in a low voice. The ground under Satet's feet began to rumble, and then in a rush surged upward to encase her in what looked like brown cement. She tried to change to human form and then back to a gazelle but the meadow's thick grasses seemed to come alive, undulating and creeping around her until her arms were firmly trapped against her sides. 

"Step brightly!" Spike called, and as Buffy, Legolas, and Gimli emerged from the portal the entire group ran over to where Satet was pinioned in place. Spike jumped off the goddess, staggering a bit from his wild ride. "Bloody hell, that girl's got the juice," he gasped, and fell over. Dawn immediately ran to him, pulling his head on her lap and babbling nonsense as she cried all over him.

"You do not know what you do," Satet panted when they surrounded Her. "We but try to secure a home for ourselves!"

"At the expense of those who already call it home!" Elessar exclaimed as Haldir reached for the quiver-strap that lay between her breasts. With a wrench of his hand, the strap was broken and the quiver, dangling from his hand. "Hear me, Aker!" the king called out, addressing the vacant air but knowing he was heard. "End this now, else your servant be slain."

Haldir tossed the quiver to Corinne, and in a heartbeat had his daggers at Satet's throat. "Your answer, Aker!" he roared. 

Satet closed her eyes a moment, and Radagast's face sharpened. "She speaks to Him," he muttered.

When She opened her eyes again, there was misery in them. "Aker says He does not bargain with lower beings; He feels this is great sport, watching you die time and again."

"I don't get it," Buffy said grouchily, slapping the flat of her sword into her palm.. "Why all the fuss and bother to set us up to die over and over? It makes no sense, especially from a time management standpoint."

"It is not sport," Arwen said slowly. "Aker tries to divide us, so we shall not rally to aid when we are needed." Her eyes raked over her husband and the others in their group. "He has already weakened us, and broken bonds of trust that we shall need if we are to conquer these gods."

Elessar turned to Satet and smiled at her, eyes glacial. "A brilliant maneuver; one I might have to deploy myself, once your corpses lie scattered at our feet." The king seemed utterly confident of this outcome. "Tell us, Aker, how will your reputation with **your** king fare when it comes to pass that a group of lower beings have managed to defeat one of your illustrious folk?"

Satet's eyes became dreamy once more. "He says He will spare you, if you leave me alive."

"And we believe him because we've all spontaneously suffered major lobotomies?" Buffy demanded. "I'm thinking not." 

Thranduil picked up Satet's bow and now stood examining it closely. "An exceptional instrument," he commented, turning to his son. "What say you to the irony of killing a creature with its own weapon, Greenleaf?"

Legolas tossed his bow to Corinne at the same time Thranduil threw Satet's to him. "Ever have I been fond of irony, _Ada_, as well you know," he replied coolly, and sent an arrow right between her eyes. 

Weakened by near-total blood loss and the lack of her quiver, Satet's form went rigid with agony. She turned her gazelle's head toward Haldir, her expression of reproachment and loss. "Remember me?" she rasped.

"No," he replied coldly. "There is no mercy in me for you or any of your ilk." And he walked away from her as she died, striding over to Corinne. "Glad I am to see that you live," he told her, gaze fixated somewhere around her chin. "But what took you so long to discern a winning strategy? And why are you teal?"

Arda = Middle-Earth

Aman = Valinor

Ada = Father


	29. Chapter 28

Without, Part 28

Haldir strode over to Corinne. "Glad I am to see that you live," he told her, gaze fixated somewhere around her chin. "But what took you so long to discern a winning strategy? And why are you teal?"

"It took me so long because I'm stubborn," Corinne replied, allowing her eyes to travel over him. It was the first time she was looking at him since the breaking of the cartouche, and it was disconcerting in the extreme to know him so intimately, to expect the little things such as how he stood or the way he held his shoulders, but yet have so little right to that knowledge. 

She'd had much time to think about things over the past few days, what with the walking and the running and the being carried and all. She knew their bond was broken, from the lack of stomach ache at being parted from him as well as their minds being closed to each other, but she found herself thinking about him entirely more often than was reasonable for people of mere acquaintance, wanting to share thoughts with him, to show him things, to listen to his voice, to breathe in his scent, even just to hear him breathe as he slept. 

A wry, familiar smirk curled the corner of his mouth, sending a _zing_ of awareness into her belly. _So the attraction's still there, too_, she thought. "Stubborn. Yes, indeed." Then he seemed to remember something, and the smirk fell abruptly from his face. "And your colour?"

"I'm teal because a pygmy shot me with a poisoned dart, and I think it's turning me into a zombie."

His eyes deftly avoided hers as he scrutinized her, coming this time to latch onto her left ear. "We will find a way to heal you," he promised. 

There was something… not right about him. "Haldir," Corinne entreated, reaching for his hand. "What's wrong? I know that we're not bonded by the cartouche anymore but—"

He stepped nimbly out of reach. "I thank you for your concern, but all is well." Now he was looking at her right shoulder instead of her face. "I must speak with Dagnir." And he was gone, his long stride eating up the ground toward Buffy. 

Elessar called for them to begin the march back to Mertsegur, and with Arwen on his arm, began to head south toward that mountain. Haldir was being yelled at by Buffy for some reason while Legolas stood back and grinned in relief that it was not he on the receiving end of her displeasure, and Gimli walked with Radagast—two saturnine figures happy to be silent in each other's company. 

Dawn had yet to release Spike from her death's grip on his arm and, truth be told, he looked none to eager for her to stop fawning over him, patting her arm affectionately and calling her "Nibblet" every thirty seconds. On the vampire's other side walked Boromir, seeming more puzzled than anything at the furious spate of chatter between his wife and her old friend.

That left Corinne and Thranduil, and the butterflies in her belly at being 'alone' with him took to frenzied flight as he aimed a slow smile in her direction, but she gladly accepted his offer of an arm to lean on, as her leg had started hurting again. "Thanks," she said somewhat breathlessly. 

"It is my pleasure to assist one so brave," he replied seriously, eyes gleaming like burnished emeralds down at her. 

"Brave?" Corinne dismissed the idea with a snort of laughter. "Hardly. I've been so scared the past few days I've near pissed myself."

"Courage is not lack of fear, my lady, but carrying on in spite of it," Thranduil told her gravely. "And it was a brave woman who went, alone, through that portal, knowing what fate might have met her."

Corinne felt her cheeks warm. "Well, if you're gonna put it that way," she conceded, hazarding a glance up at him. Feeling reckless, she added, "How are things going with Legolas and Buffy and you?"

"Beautifully, until Greenleaf remembers we are at odds and decides to dislike me again," he replied smoothly. "It is ever thus with children, Elrond tells me… glad I am that Elbrennil and I had only the one, for I doubt it would amuse me as much had I three such attitudes to endure." He flicked a faint smile at her. "Have you any children?"

Unaccountably, the memory flooded Corinne's mind at that moment of the last time she'd thought of having children, that blessedly perfect moment of making love with Haldir before it had all gone so terribly, horribly wrong. Desire warred with horror as she recalled his hoarsely spoken words of love_: "With my last breath, I will love you,"_ and then the cruel vice of his hands on her arms, the hard press of his mouth on hers, sharp teeth cutting her lips as he shoved his knee between her thighs, intent on finishing what they'd started. 

Pulling away from Thranduil, she wrapped her arms around her waist and stared at the back of Haldir's head. In mid-sentence, he seemed to sense her attention, for he stopped and turned to face her. His eyes for once did not skitter away, instead locking with a desperate pain on hers, and she knew that all the despair and fear and betrayal she'd felt—no matter that it hadn't really been **him**—showed on her face, in the way she rocked back and forth in unconscious misery.

A tired sort of acceptance settled on Haldir's face then, and he lowered his head. To see him, this proud and fine elf, so defeated made her hurt terribly on his behalf, and she started toward him before she knew what she was doing. At her first step, his head flew up again and this time his gaze was wary, even warning. 

"Do not go to him," Thranduil instructed softly from behind her. "He will not thank you for it."

As she watched, stricken, Haldir turned from her and began walking once more, catching up to where Buffy and Legolas stood waiting for him. After that, the exhilaration of their triumph over Satet left her quickly, and it was with more than a little embarrassment that she submitted to being hoisted into Thranduil's capable arms. 

Feeling safe and comfortable for the first time in days, surrounded by the divine scent of the king (_what **was** it about Mirkwood's royal family?_ she wondered drowsily) she fell into a shallow sleep.

"You haven't stopped glancing back at her for the past hour," Buffy mentioned casually at Haldir's side. "How long's it going to take for you to admit that you still feel something for her?"

Haldir sliced her a glance out of narrowed eyes. "I have not looked at her but once," he protested, the sneaking of another peek at Corinne belying his words. "I do not trust Thranduil," he said when Buffy merely raised her eyebrows in great skepticism.

"What, do you think he's going to ravish her? Here? Now?" Buffy goggled at him. "What **is** it with you jealous elves?" For no reason that Haldir could discern, the Slayer turned to her husband and dealt him a none-too-soft blow on the shoulder. "Aren't your women allowed to have male friends?"

Legolas rubbed his shoulder and turned an appealingly wounded look upon her. "It is one thing to have friends," he told her. "I do not begrudge you your friendship with Gimli, or Elessar. But when your friend looks upon you with lust in his eyes…" He turned a piercing stare toward Spike, who gave him a jaunty two-fingered wave in salute, much to Dawn's amusement.

Buffy sighed. "Sweetie, it's just a look. Not like we're gonna go hog-wild and begin ravishing each other…" Her words trailed off as Haldir went a sickly green shade. "Hal?" she asked. "Haldir?" She turned to Elessar. "What's wrong with him?"

Elessar surveyed the elf before him a long moment. "I believe," he said at last, "that my lady wife is better equipped to explain the trials we have endured." He gave her an enquiring glance, not wanting to volunteer her for something she did not wish to do.

Nodding, she stepped forward. "Come, all ye of Dagnir's party," she said, "for I would explain this but once, and never again."

It was a curious group who joined her apart from the rest, eager to hear what she would say; it was a furious group that dispersed once she was finished. 

"And suddenly, the way Boromir and Haldir are staying twenty feet away from each other makes sense," Buffy muttered grimly. "I am so gonna kill Aker…" She turned to Radagast. "Is there some way to resurrect him, so I can kill him twice?"

"If there is, I will find it," he promised with dour purpose. "I tired of mind-games during the War, and will not suffer them again."

And in Thranduil's arms, Corinne pressed her face against his shoulder and wept silently for Haldir and the violation he had endured, not once, but twice. 

***

"The primordial waters, Nun, are the font of all existence," Corinne explained when they reached the edge of the river that encircled Mertsegur. "Once a year, Isis sheds a single tear, and Satet collects it in her jar to pour it into Nun. It is all-healing, all-soothing, all-curing." She sat on the ground and began struggling to remove her runners, then glanced upward at the group watching her. "Well? Unless you're all going to watch while I have a skinny-dip, I suggest you hie yourself elsewhere."

"P'raps I should stay with you," Spike offered, sending her a licentious grin that was more joke than anything. "Just to make sure you don't float away."

Buffy cuffed him playfully over the head. "That's gallant of you, Fang Jr., but I don't think so."

"Actually, Buffy, that's a decent idea… my fingers stopped working properly hours ago, and I could dictate notes to him while I swim," Corinne interjected. 

Spike frowned. "Oi, I was just trying to get a cheap look," he protested. "Not volunteer myself for secretarial duty."

"Too late, you've got it," Corinne told him with a laugh, and tossed him the little notebook and pen Dawn had given her, and in which she'd scribbled (to Thranduil's puzzlement and amusement) until her hands had failed her. "Point number one: lava-land. The paths seemed to have been formed of cooled magma, approximately two meters wide, of uneven surface…"

Grumbling, Spike dropped heavily to the ground and began to write. Buffy turned away with a grin, allowing Corinne to finish undressing, and joined the others. A splash a few moments later told her Corinne was in the water, and her exclamation of "holy crap, it's cold!" confirmed it. 

An hour later, nothing had been accomplished but the filling of the notebook, cramps in Spike's hands from all the writing, and Corinne had turned a deeper shade of teal from cold. 

"Pet, it's not working," Spike told her flatly. "Get your arse out of the water."

She stumbled out, letting him wrap her in a cloak. "I d-don't think that the Tear of Isis is in the w-waters yet," she said, more to herself than to him. "Go get Satet's quiver, will you?" He left her, and she curled onto her side to try and generate a little warmth until his return.

When the quiver arrived, it was borne not by Spike, but by Haldir. "What is wrong?" he demanded, a current of concern underlying his gruff tone. "What need do you have for this?"

She reached for the quiver, uncaring how the cloak fell open and exposed her ample charms for the world (or in this case, Haldir) to see. _Not like he hasn't seen them before,_ she thought crossly, and thrust her hand into the quiver. Arrows, arrows, and more arrows. "Dammit," she muttered, and turned it upside down. Out fell arrows, a small jar of bowstring wax, and…

"Ha!" she exulted, catching the tiny phial before it could fall to the ground. "Here," she said, thrusting it at Haldir, "you pour it in."

He frowned. "Why me?"

"You're closer to being a god than I am," Corinne replied. At his expression of frank disbelief, she continued. "You are! Beautiful, immortal, talented… "

"And vastly unworthy of every one of them," he finished bitterly, standing. "What I have done negates every good characteristic I possess."

"None of it was your fault," Corinne told him urgently. 

"It was my body that forced itself on you; my body that would have raped you," he replied, his face pained. "And my memories that play in my head, reliving the moments without end. And that does not count what occurred with Boromir… ai…" He covered his face with his hands, shaking his platinum head.

"I knew when it happened that it wasn't you, Haldir," Corinne told him gently. "And Boromir knows, too."

"It could not have happened, were I not capable of it," he insisted. "I do not know who I am anymore. All that I can be sure of is that our bond is over, Corinne, and whatever we had because of it… whatever we felt because of it… that must be over, as well."

"You don't just wake up one morning and stop loving someone," she said softly, reproachfully. "The cartouche made us want each other, but I fell in love with you all by myself."

"Corinne, do not!" Haldir exclaimed, his shoulders rigid. "I cannot endure more of this."

"We can help each other, Haldir," she entreated, the hope on her face fading to resignation when he turned away from her. Wrenching off the phial's plug, she tipped it over the water. A single, thick droplet hung poised at the lip of the phial for a long moment; a ray of sunlight hit it and a multitude of colours refracted and bounced round the woman and the elf. Quivering, it fell into the water, and where it hit, a thousand light-filled ripples undulated in response, the clear depths of the water seeming to gain an effulgence before being whisked away by the current.

Dropping the cloak, Corinne stepped into the water, braced for the cold but pleasantly surprised to find it as warm as bathwater. "Mmm," she said, and dove under the surface to submerge herself. Coming up for air, she gazed at her hands and with great satisfaction noted that they were turning, albeit slowly, from teal to their normal peachy-pink colour. Reaching down to feel her wound, she found that the swelling was all but gone, and the puckering of the scar Spike had given her barely able to be discerned. "Whoo!" she cried in delight. 

Her delight was short-lived, however, when a rumbling began under the water, intensifying with each second until the water around Corinne was bubbling and roiling. Scrambling out of the water, she grabbed the hand that Haldir proffered and fell heavily against him, knocking them both to the ground.

As suddenly as it started, the rumbling stopped, but the world could have fallen apart for all the notice Corinne and Haldir paid it. "I love you," she said, cupping his cheek in her hand. His skin felt, as always, like the finest-grain suede, and she couldn't resist laying her own cheek against him. "Please don't do this to us." 

His eyes, charcoal-dark, were anguished when she pulled back to look at him. "I must."

"I can't believe this!" she shouted, bounding to her feet, clutching the cloak haphazardly around herself. "I never thought I'd see the day when I was the brave one and you were the coward, Haldir of Lothlórien."

Anguish turned to anger; in a heartbeat, his eyes were snapping sparks at her, and he opened his mouth for rejoinder but the others bounded around the line of trees, drawn by Corinne's yelling. It was clear to all assembled what they'd been arguing about. 

Spike and even Thranduil grinned widely at her state of undress, and with a rebellious glare at Haldir, she unblushingly allowed Mirkwood's king to drape his own cloak around her shoulders and lead her away.

"Many fine sons could you bear with those hips," Gimli said admiringly, following them. "Tis a fine shape you have to you, lass." The look he shot Haldir spoke volumes. "Even if some are too stupid to claim you, there are dozens of others who would leap at the chance."

"Enough of this," Radagast grumbled. "How I long for the lot of you to be struck mute." He glared them all into silence before continuing. "A bridge has risen from the waters, but shows signs of instability; we should cross ere it disappears again."

Corinne hurried to change behind the curtain of Thranduil's judiciously held cloak; a quick inspection by Spike of her wound proclaimed her good as new and so it was only her heart that hurt as she stepped onto the bridge. Made of stone, each massive block was heavily carved with hieratic script and hieroglyphics. 

"What does all this say?" Buffy asked, mystified, but Corinne was too occupied in taking a rubbing of a particularly fine carving to answer immediately.

"See those bits with ovals around them?" she called to the others at last. "Those are cartouches; don't touch them, just in case." Immediately, Boromir, Arwen, and Gimli jerked back, looking sheepish. "This is the entrance to Ta-tenen," Corinne continued. "There seems to be some dissent on whether or not things that occur within can change the course of history, as if all existence is in an ungelled state of flux and anything can happen, but…" She waved her hand over one of the stones. "It's only on that one block, and I think it's more superstition than anything, a warning to be careful of consequences."

Elessar looked far from happy, having to accept her educated guess, but as there was little else to go on, clamped his mouth shut and proceeded. The opening in the mountain, at the other end of the bridge, loomed like a great dark mouth, ravenous and insatiable.

Feeling a thrill of fear ripple up her spine, Corinne did something she'd never done in her life: she prayed. "Please, Seshat, hear your child," she entreated in a whisper so faint even the elves and the vampire could not have heard her, hoping that deity was aware of her plea. "Protect us, guide us, help us to survive this." She had no idea if Seshat actually heard her, but it made her feel a little stronger, and it was with this tiny extra bit of strength that she stepped over the threshold and into the mountain of Mertsegur, en route to the isle from the dawn of time. 


	30. Chapter 29

Author's Note: this chapter dedicated to Lindsey for feeding my new obsession over Anderson Cooper, news stud extraordinaire.

Without, Part 29

Darkness fell about them like a shroud as they stepped into the belly of Mertsegur. Even the sound of their footsteps, shuffling in the dust, seemed muffled and subdued, and they found themselves speaking in whispers.

"This puts me in mind of Moria," commented Legolas, none too happy.

"Except no dead dwarves," Buffy added. A gruff _hmph_ elsewhere in the area was Gimli's confirmation of the sentiment.

With a whoosh, two wall torches burst into flame on either side of them, revealing their surroundings. They stood in a corridor made of deeply carved stone, tall-ceilinged and elaborate. As they watched, two more torches lit spontaneously further down the corridor, and then two more further beyond them, the action repeating until the entire passageway was visible. 

"That's our welcome, then," Spike muttered before turning to Corinne, who'd jumped in fear at the first torches' igniting and grabbed his hand. "You sure there isn't someone else you'd rather be hand-in-hand with, pet?" he asked, nodding pointedly toward Haldir. "Someone more elven, like?"

Haldir's shoulders stiffened visibly, filling Corinne with a sense of great consternation. "Certainly," she replied, and marched over to Thranduil. "With your permission, your majesty?"

"My permission, and my pleasure," he replied at once in silken tones, tucking her hand securely in the crook of his elbow. Haldir's spine went even more rigid, if possible, and Corinne almost relented but Thranduil swept them in typical grandiose manner past the Guardian and it was too late. 

"You love teasing him, don't you?" she muttered. 

"Of course," he muttered back. "Tell me it is not enjoyable to watch him grind his teeth so."

"I think 'tis fitting," piped up Legolas. "He delighted in torturing me thus during the war, with Dagnir."

"It would behoove us to be less conversant and more watchful," Radagast said repressively, brushing past them none-too-gently and suddenly finding himself on the ground and blinking up at the torchlight burnishing the head of the King of Mirkwood.

"My pardon," said Thranduil, face most determinedly innocent. "How distressing that you would accidentally trip in that manner."

The wizard's face was like a thundercloud as he opened his mouth to reply but every member of the group with enhanced hearing whipped their heads around to the end of the corridor. 

"Incoming," Buffy said, and everyone fell into battle stances, with her, Boromir, and Elessar at the forefront and the elves flanking on either side, bows at the ready. 

A huge hoof stepped out of the murky shadows, planting itself with a thud on the stone floor. It was attached to an equally immense, heavily armoured leg. "Yowza," Dawn muttered, and took a firmer grip on her pike as the rest of the creature hove into view. "Is that… it can't be!" she exclaimed, whirling back to look with wide, accusing eyes at Corinne. "What the hell is that doing here? It's Greek! I thought this whole fever-dream was Egyptian?"

The minotaur was massive, with a huge, horned head resting atop a thickly muscled neck. In each meaty fist it gripped two short-handled axes, and was already swinging them in anticipation of its battle with them. With a single blow, it knocked Boromir's sword out of his hand, sending it clattering against the far wall, and precious moments were wasted as all assembled blinked in astonishment, for neither Boromir nor his sword were exactly petite lightweights.

Then it roared, shaking the stones around them, and they were galvanized into action. Buffy and Elessar rushed it, and while it was thus distracted by them Haldir and Dawn came at it. The elf hamstrung it, making it fall to one knee, and Dawn got a clever blow in when she maneuvered the tip of her pike into the fleshy bit between jaw and shoulder. With an agonized bellow, it lurched backward, knocking Buffy over in its death throes.

"Ahh!" she yelped in surprise as she flew backward to the shadows from whence the beast had come.

"Alright, Slayer?" Spike called back to her.

"No, not really," she replied, her voice so calm that it put everyone on instant alert. 

"Stay here," Haldir commanded Corinne as he rushed by with the others. 

"Yes, stay here," Thranduil reiterated. Gimli merely glared in her direction, as if daring her to disobey the elves. She sighed, tapping her foot, and waited. It didn't take long; before she'd tapped three times the sounds of another fight and Dawn's unhappy, "How many **are** there?" floated around the corner. 

"I hate being useless," Corinne muttered to no one, gazing around and mentally cataloguing her surroundings. Corridor made of dry-fitted stone, grey, intricately carved using metal tools if she were any judge, against which rested a Scythian-style hunter's bow banded with multiple colours…hm. Legolas must have dropped Satet's bow and quiver some time during the slaughter of the first minotaur. She picked them up, slinging the quiver over her shoulder for ease of carrying and started to inch her way forward, curious to see what was happening with the others.

As she did, a sound made its way to her ears… seductive, ripe, satiny-smooth and yet rough like a kitten's tongue, prickling her nerves to attention. It was a sort of keening, a wailing that spoke of heart-rending misery at the same time it whispered of unimaginable delights. 

"Oh, oh, ohhhhhhh." The sound echoed mournfully off the walls.

After what Arwen had told them had happened to their party, Corinne felt a jolt of fear and found herself awkwardly drawing an arrow from the quiver and fitting it to the bowstring.

"What the hell am I doing?" she murmured to herself, feeling like her eyeballs would pop out of her head if her eyes widened any further. "I can't shoot a bow. I can't even **pull** a bow."

There was a flash of orangey light then, and before her materialized no fewer than four… things. Definitely female, their skin was pale grey, but the struts of the bat-like wings that flapped slowly, suspending them a few feet above the ground, and the long hair that cascaded to their hips were black as night. Milk-white eyes and hands with only four slender fingers beckoned to her, and she realized that the keening had stopped, leaving her in utter silence, surrounded by…

"Sirens," she breathed. Oh, this was weird. And bad, she amended when one began to coast toward her, seeming to float more than fly… in a heartbeat, Corinne pulled back the bowstring, and a tiny part of her mind registered a vague surprise that she would have the strength to do such a thing, but then she released the arrow and…

It split, mid-flight, into four arrows, one for each siren, and hit in the dead-centre of each of their chests.

"Oh, ow, owwwwwwwww," they keened, milky eyes gazing with shock and longing at her. Corinne was filled with an odd sense of betrayal, as if she weren't supposed to have defended herself against them, but with another flash of orangey light and a fizzling noise, the sirens seemed to simply crisp up, and soft clouds of ash fell to the floor. 

"Ok, that was messed up," Corinne stated, arms hanging in shock by her sides, the bow dangling from limp fingers. 

A feminine cry of pain sounded from around the corner, and she found herself jogging toward it and peeking around. The battle wasn't going very well; there were at least a half-dozen minotaurs and even with two of the 'good guys' on each, they weren't making much progress. Spike and Dawn wrestled with the one nearest to Corinne, and as she watched, it swiped at Dawn with one of its axes, knocking the pike from her hands and sending her skidding across the floor to hit her head on the wall. 

"Nibblet?" Spike demanded, jabbing with his sword at one of its trunk-like arms. "Nibblet?" His voice rose with a tinge of panic, and he turned to regard Dawn. Taking advantage of his opponent's distraction, the minotaur pulled back his axe to hit the vampire, and Corinne found her arms working once more without her brain's input: an arrow was plucked from the quiver, fitted to the string, and fired at the minotaur in a single, flawlessly smooth motion.

Spike turned back in time to see the arrow flying at him, and his eyes rounded with shock, as the missile—the **wooden** missile—was flying directly for his heart. Just as it would pierce his sternum, however, it changed trajectory in an abrupt motion and swerved around him to embed itself in the vulnerable area at the back of the minotaur's neck. 

It dropped both axes and tried to reach for the arrow, to wrench it free, but its arms were so burly and muscle-bound that it could not reach, and soon was falling to the ground, eyes glazing in death.

Spike stared at her a scant moment before bounding over to her and wrenching both quiver and bow from her. "An idiot-proof bow," he muttered admiringly, slinging the quiver over his shoulder. "Bloody marvelous." He began firing in an almost haphazard manner at the other minotaurs; the arrows jogged this way and that, one swooping around Thranduil to lodge in the eye socket of the one he and Elessar battled whilst a second arrow plunged between Gimli's legs to come up and puncture the belly of the one fought by the dwarf and Legolas. 

"Help Dawn," Spike instructed her, and Corinne pulled her mesmerized gaze from the carnage he was wreaking to scramble over to the woman's limp form, grasping her under the arms and carefully pulling her away out of danger. 

"Oi, Slayer, head's up!" Spike called, firing an arrow at her foe. She jerked back and it skewered the minotaur in the throat, pinning her long braid to its body and dragging her down when it fell to the floor. 

"Spike, you idiot!" she yelled, pulling her plait free, and got a cheeky grin for her trouble before she rounded on the last two: Radagast and Haldir seemed to have things in hand with theirs, as it was bellowing furiously at the hail of melon-sized rocks the wizard was pulling from the air to toss with admirable accuracy at its head whilst the elf set about carving the creature into more manageable pieces. 

Buffy took a running leap and landed squarely on the shoulders of the one Boromir and Elessar were fighting, and taking a firm grasp of its horns, wrenched until its neck snapped with a sick crunch. 

"Oh, just **kill** it already," Corinne admonished Haldir when it became clear that he was merely toying with it. He flashed her a silvery glare and darted his hand under its arm to plant a dagger to the hilt in the centre of its chest before striding over to her, not even watching as it fell with a juicy gasp to its knees (Radagast dropped another, particularly large, stone on its head and gave a satisfied, "hah!" when it keeled over).

"Did I not tell you to stay where I left you?" he demanded, grasping her arms and shaking her. "Why will you never obey me?"

His hair was mussed, his eyes were bright, and a very pretty flush of exertion had stolen over his ivory cheeks. In short, he looked enchanting and Corinne felt perfectly justified in wriggling free of his grasp, winding her arms around his neck, and giving him a good hard cuddle.

"**Now** what are you doing?" he gritted out, trying to dislodge her, but she clung like a barnacle, going so far as to plant little kisses along his jaw. 

"I'm not going to make it easy for you, you big jerk," she informed him, to the great amusement of their audience. 

Hands like vices gripped her wrists and wrenched her away, dropping her on her butt. "Do not do that again," he told her, his voice frosty. "Do not." Wheeling about, he yanked his dagger out of the dead minotaur and wiped it on the leg of his trousers, resheathing it and its brother on his back before stomping away, the others parting before him. 

Buffy gave Corinne an encouraging grin before hurrying after her friend, Legolas and Spike a pace behind, and the others set about recovering from the battle before falling in behind.

"Don't know why you want such a grouch," Dawn commented as Boromir fussed over the tiny bruise at her temple. "I got myself a nice, good-tempered guy." She exchanged a sweet smile with her husband. "We had no trouble at all falling in love, did we, honey?"

"It was the easiest thing I have ever done," he replied, helping her to her feet. "And something I do again every time I look upon you." When both women sighed, he looked deeply embarrassed. "Please forget I said that."

"As **if**," Dawn crowed. She snuggled against his side and they joined the similarly affectionate king and queen of Gondor in wandering down the passageway.

"What is it about killing things that puts you people in such a good mood?" Corinne wondered aloud, for she was still somewhat shaken by her having offed a herd of sirens with the aid of a seemingly magical bow, and being surrounded by ferociously fighting bull/men creatures. "Am I the only moderately sane person here?"

Predictably, no one answered. Sighing, she trudged along behind them.

***

It took several hours for them to reach the end of the long, winding corridor. It seemed around every turn was another group of minotaurs or sirens. The latter especially proved difficult for the males of the group to defeat, as they were much more inclined to stop in the middle of an attack to listen to the beguiling wails, their eyes dreamy as they smiled blissfully up at the winged creatures. Consequently, it fell to Buffy, Arwen, Dawn, and even Corinne equipped with Satet's "idiot-proof" bow to take them down more often than not.

"Typical," Dawn huffed to her sister as she nailed a siren with her pike. 

"Oh, I don't know," Buffy replied with a grin, closing her husband's gaping mouth with a gentle hand before thrusting her sword into the chest of one of the latest group of sirens. "I think they're kinda cute, gaping and drooling like that." She stretched up on tiptoes and kissed Legolas until his eyes lost the glazing-over they'd acquired with the siren-song and he was looking down at her with a mixture of fondness and frustration that they were not in an appropriate place to continue that train of thought. 

"Have we come to the end, then, _tithen maethoramin_?" he asked, looking past her to where the corridor appeared to end abruptly. 

"Hm," was her response, and she cautiously approached the flat wall ahead, placing her palms against it, then her ear. "I hear… water," she said, and began to push. One by one, the others came forward to add their strength. It moved inch by inch for a few agonizing minutes, and then with a lurch, fell away so quickly they had to leap back to keep from overbalancing and pitching forward into the abyss that had just appeared before them.

Ok, not an abyss per se, but… as Corinne crept forward to Haldir's side to investigate, it was the only word she could think of to describe the immense cavern on the other side of the gaping hole they'd just created. 

The ceiling of it arched far, far above and the water Buffy had heard coursed with frightening speed far, far below. The walls of the cavern seemed to be encrusted with gems or the like, because a magnificent array of colours refracted and bounced all around them, issuing from some mysterious source she couldn't detect.

An eerie humming, like a chord struck on a set of crystal goblets, emanated from the cavern, vibrating and shuddering through them on a visceral level until Corinne was sure she could feel it in her very bones. Her hand slipped of its own accord into Haldir's and for a moment, before he remembered that he could not have anything to do with her, Haldir laced his fingers with hers and squeezed tenderly, even forgetting himself so far as to give her a faint smile.

And then the threads wandered out of nowhere, wrapping around them with suffocating strength and alarming speed, wrenching them apart. Buffy, as the strongest, was able to resist the longest but eventually even she was overwhelmed by the threads. In every colour of the rainbow, the threads pinned their arms to their sides, tangling in their legs, sneaking around their faces. In short order they were rendered blind, mute, and crippled.

They were lifted off their feet, and the sensation of being hefted aloft was made even more disconcerting when the humming grew louder, and many-coloured lights flashed so brightly Corinne could see them past her eyelids and the threads that bound them closed. With a gasp she realized they were being plucked from the passageway and hauled out into the midst of the cavern, and remembering the great height at which they'd stood above the thrashing waters below, felt her stomach as well as her hopes plummet.

Frantically, she wracked her brain for some clue as to what was happening to them, but it was hard because the humming was loud, so loud, seeming to fill her head until she was sure it would burst—

And then it stopped.

Feeling the sudden lack of sound almost like a physical blow, Corinne writhed within her fabric prison, struggling fruitlessly to be free. Then the threads around her face released, and her eyes watered from the onslaught of lights reflecting into them. 

When she could see, she craned her neck as far as she could and found that their entire company was suspended hundreds of feet in the air by thousands of slender, gossamer, shimmering filaments. 

And before them, in mid-air, stood two figures. The female was easy for Corinne to recognize: Tayet, goddess of weaving, held a drop-spindle and idly created yet another thread while she watched her newly-captured prey with avid eyes. Catching Corinne's gaze, she smiled, a slow easy grin of pure malignance. Shuddering, Corinne twisted away, only to find herself looking upon the male of the pair.

Of an indeterminate age—not child, not adult—he seemed oblivious to the two snakes that wound sinuously around his torso as he surveyed their company with flat, emotionless eyes. A golden collar was looped like a lariat round his neck, with the long tail hanging to his navel, and two cross-arms mimicking his winglike collarbones, reaching outward. 

"_An ankh_," Corinne pondered. "_An ankh, two snakes…_" Then she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Those symbols could only mean that before her stood Heka, god of magic and speech, and that was a bad thing. She only hoped the others, worn down by their previous experiences with mind-games, would not easily succumb, and her last thought before consciousness faded was of Haldir. "_Seshat, protect him…_"

_tithen maethoramin_ = my tiny warrior


	31. Chapter 30

Without, Part 30

Terror and joy. 

Opposite emotions, but remarkably similar in their scope, in their power, in their seduction, in the lengths to which people would go to avoid one or acquire the other. Heka had used them often to obtain His goals over the past tens of thousands of years of His existence, and rarely had He encountered beings able to resist. 

He anticipated few such problems with this group; they seemed simple enough. A few handfuls of elves and humans, a vampire—hm, intriguing, that one could come in useful—a dwarf, and an Istari. In all, a fascinating blend of races. The wizard alone would pose trouble for Him; with a wave of His hand, Heka separated the tapestry-wrapped bundle that was Radagast from the others before getting down to business. 

One of the snakes twining around him slithered down around his leg to more closely investigate the strong woman, known as Dagnir or the Slayer… her fears were many, and all revolved around the safety of her loved ones, especially that elven husband of hers. Heka clucked His tongue in derision; how easy she would be to manipulate with a few nudges in the direction of abandonment… As for the husband, his was of a dilemma than a fear, per se: to heed the call of the Valar and leave for Aman, or stay with his human wife in Arda? Heka mixed up a little nightmare involving rejection by both the gods and his wife, and with a flick of the finger, set it on Legolas. 

There were three other couples, three other pairs bound together, heart and mind. The first of them featured an elven female and human male, both their souls weighing heavy with responsibility—for the kingdom they ruled, and for the consequences of their love. The elleth's fear involved being cast aside by the Man for whom she'd forsaken immortality; his was an interesting mélange of both horror and a peculiar, desperate hope that she would change her mind about being his mate, and leave for eternal life in Valinor. 

Heka frowned in displeasure; the ones who tortured themselves were never any fun. With a disgruntled twitch of a shoulder, He sent dreams of infidelity and the destruction of Gondor to Arwen and Elessar respectively, and nearly dislodged the second snake, which glared at him as it gripped just a **tetch** too hard around his neck. Smirking, Heka loosened it with a thought.

The second of the pairs were both human, but the female was… Heka sucked in a deep breath as the magnitude of her power made itself known to Him. This was the Key, the nexus of all magic, the joining-point for all mysticism in any dimension, any universe. 

"_They made it into a **person**?_" Heka thought in baffled outrage. 

Of all the harebrained schemes… to force all that sheer untapped potential into a small, frail, finite container was sheer lunacy. And He'd lay odds that she had no idea of the extent of her abilities, either-- that she had no concept of what she could accomplish. It was almost perversion that her main concerns were over her offspring, her mate, her sister; such petty issues when she could destroy entire solar systems with a single word. With a sour look that spoke of frustration and not a small amount of jealousy, He channeled some persistent images of death and mayhem her way before turning to her husband.

This one had been beleaguered recently, especially by that lustful inhibition-releasing spell Heka had worked for Aker a few days ago. It would seem it had called into doubt all he thought he knew about his sexuality… How He loved to make them doubt themselves! A few fantasies involving various males of Boromir's acquaintance should do nicely, the god thought, and made it so.

The last pair were another mixing of races. The elf had been hard done-by of late, first under the thrall of the cartouche, then the same spell as for the Man—_ah, they were the causes of each others' anxiety_, Heka realized, reading further into Haldir's mind, _excellent_—and then Satet's mixed blessing of permitting him to remember each failure as he strove time and again to defeat Her. Despair, loneliness, shame… _poor elf_, Heka thought mockingly, and decided to send him something pleasant to stew over, made all the more bittersweet because it was actually obtainable. "_This one refuses to accept what is being given to him with both hands,_" Heka thought in amazement. Self-denying types never failed to mystify Him, and there were few mysteries left for one such as He.

As for the woman… her fondest dreams had already been offered to her by Seshat, that old softie… Heka made a mental note to speak to Her later. It simply wouldn't **do** to have His specialty usurped just because She wanted to impress Her new followers. Folding His arms, He tapped His fingers thoughtfully on the opposite slender bicep. _What to do, what to do…_ her greatest fear was that the elf would find her undesirable now that he wasn't enspelled by the cartouche any longer. A future involving significant weight gain, the addition of several hairy facial moles and a severe flatulence issue, and an obviously unfaithful elven husband should do the trick, He mused, and sent that her way.

The dwarf was easy to lead along… give him his own gem-laden mountain and a gold-haired elleth named Galadriel and he was ripe for the plucking. The vampire, however, was somewhat more complex. In Heka's experience, the undead were usually concerned with naught but the feed; this one's fondest wish was to have the Slayer for his own. With a tiny smile, Heka separated him too from the rest, to be dealt with more closely at a later time.

He came to the last, another elf. Related to the mate of the Slayer, if He was not mistaken…and for the first time in at least eight thousand years, came up blank. No fears? No joys? How was it even possible? Pressing harder, he forced himself into Thranduil's mind and was assailed with an almost overwhelming sense of ennui. "What **is** this?" He demanded, so riled that he woke up the elf with a jolt and put the question to him personally.

The lower being's green eyes opened slowly. "What is it you want of me?" he asked, and there was no trepidation, no alarm. Just mild curiosity and, deeper down, a slight sense of weariness. 

"How can it be that you have no fears, no hopes, that I can play with?" Heka queried somewhat snippishly.

Thranduil smiled slowly as he comprehended what the god wanted to know. "I think," he replied slowly, "it is because both my greatest terror and my greatest joy have already come to pass; there is naught you can do to me."

"Tell me," Heka commanded, coming closer, hands clenching and unclenching in fury. "Tell me."

"My wife, my Elbrennil," Thranduil replied, his voice faltering for the first time in centuries as he said her name, "is gone from me these last two millennia. That was my keenest sorrow, to lose her. She was of the Noldor, proud and fierce, and her black hair fell past her knees… when she died, the world became dark for me, and dark has it remained since." Lost in his memory of her, his eyes became distant for a moment before he remembered his audience. 

"As for the joy… I have seen the birth of my son, my Greenleaf, and nothing can ever surpass that. He is my image, but for Elbrennil's eyes, and bears her nature, thank the Valar…" Thranduil smiled. "I am replete, knowing our love created such a fine elf. There is naught you can do to me now."

Then his emerald gaze turned speculative. "But you, god… what can there be for you? Do you spend your days as errand-boy for others? Have they greater power or importance than you?"

"They do not," Heka refuted, eyes very narrow and snakes hissing in agitation. "I fulfill my purpose."

"That sounds like a hollow existence to my ears," Thranduil said, then added, "Well I know the hollow existence, for it has been my own since Elbrennil passed to be with Mandos." He heaved a sigh. "At least I have a land to rule, a people to lead, a realm to protect." Schooling his expression to one of polite interest, he asked, "Do you have aught of those for yourself?"

Heka was practically grinding His teeth. "I do not," He admitted with great reluctance, "but I have been promised a great augmentation of my powers once this is done."

"Augmentation of powers?" Thranduil inquired mildly. "So you can continue to apply them for the purposes of others?" A wheat-gold brow raised in skepticism, but he said nothing except, "If you will be satisfied with that, so be it." He shrugged. "It would not satisfy **me**."

"The satisfaction of lower beings does not interest the likes of us," Heka replied somewhat nastily, stung by the implication that this elf-creature was more discerning than He.

"As you say," Thranduil conceded with a slight nod, somehow conveying a vague sense of humoring Heka rather than believing Him. 

Heka's frustration with the elf peaked; He was not known for His forbearance or patience in the best of circumstances, and as He had been a bit touchy of late concerning this very issue it was a surprise to no one (read: the snakes that clothed him and Tayet) when He emitted a wordless scream of fury and, with a single slashing motion of His hand, ripped off the sheltering cage of threads that bound the king of Mirkwood.

Then He smiled as the elf fell.

***

Misery without end; sorrow and loneliness and shame and fear. Buffy was buffeted by storm after storm of those emotions, reeling back and forth from the wallops as they crashed into her, and a single searing thought tore from her soul: _make it stop. Anything, I'll do anything, but please, make it stop._

And a teasing, almost flirtatious voice answered her: _Not yet._

Whimpering, Buffy's mind cowered, huddled in on itself, trying with increasing desperation to shield itself from more anguish. Another age of pain, another request, another playful denial. 

"Not yet, not yet," she muttered. "When?" A tiny spark of anger started, and began to supplant the fear; growing steadily, as things do with plenty of fertile ground, her rage built until it exploded. She wrenched herself awake, and finding herself trapped in some sort of hazy binding, began to fight like a wild thing, with claws and fangs. The threads began to give way, and it was only with a hurried grab at them that she kept herself from falling into the busy water in the very great distance below. 

"I'm not a big fan of heights," she muttered, and squinted as she gazed around her. Except for eight other similarly-wrapped bundles,  there was no one in the huge, empty cavern, and she breathed a sigh of relief before frowning. It was hard to remember what had been going on before the pain, before Legolas had laughed and deserted her, told her she was doomed, that being with her was a curse…

"Legolas," she breathed, and scrutinized the other bundles until she saw a telltale flash of familiar pale-gold hair; swinging her weight on the tattered fragments of her own cocoon, she reached out and took hold of him, climbing on and wrapping her legs around as she reached for her boot-knife and began hacking at his restraints.

Eventually she uncovered his face, and gasped to see his eyes closed. He slept, like all elves, with eyes open, if somewhat glazed over, and to see him thus, so deathlike, frightened her. "Legolas," she whispered in his pointed ear, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him, repeating his name, until the haze of sleep melted from him. 

"Dagnir?" he mumbled. "I care not for Aman, if you cannot be there with me; I will remain with you always, only never leave me. _Lle naa hûn nîn, herves nîn, amin mela lle_."

Crying, Buffy kissed him again and again, promising him without words that he had nothing to fear, and finally he came to full consciousness. His eyes, blue as lapis, stared into hers for a long moment. "It wasn't real," she told him, and felt a fresh wash of tears when he slumped against her in relief. 

"We have to free the others," she said, and resumed her hacking at his bindings. When his arms were free, she left him to untangle his legs, swinging over to Elessar and beginning to work on him. 

"I do not suggest you wake him as sweetly as you did me," Legolas suggested with a hint of his usual mischievous smile, going to work on the next person, who happened to be Corinne. 

Buffy tended to agree, so she just slapped Elessar's stubbled cheeks lightly and repeated his name until he came awake, then cut away his wrappings so he could work on Boromir. She moved on to Arwen, then Dawn. 

Haldir was last, and he smiled blissfully, eyes still closed tightly, when she uncovered his face. "Corinne," he murmured. "The children are well this morning?"

The others fell silent and stared at him; Corinne, who was having trouble holding on to the remains of her shroud, whipped her head around. Buffy grabbed her arm and for one heart-stopping moment, she was suspended in space held only by a deceptively fragile-looking woman… then she was locked, arms and legs, around her elf and Buffy was swinging away to help hack Gimli free, as the dwarf was **most** vocal about being woken from his most pleasant dream of ruling a mithril-rich mountain, the Lady of the Wood by his side. 

"Haldir," she told him, her voice low as she smoothed back a lock of his hair, "there are no children."

"No children?" His voice, rich with amusement, was frankly skeptical. "That is not what you said last night, when you complained that there were far too many running around in our talan. You even blamed me for giving them to you, though I do not recall your complaining much at the time." His eyes fluttered open, so clear and unshadowed and happy that Corinne felt a pang at having to disappoint him. 

"I'm sorry, Haldir," she said, feeling like her heart was breaking. "But we don't have any children. It was—" her throat closed up then, and she had to fight to speak. "It was just a dream."

"Impossible," he said flatly. "Ataralassë, our first child, how Celeborn delights there is a new generation to pester him in his study, now that she can read… Earo, so sturdy as his uncles teach him archery, and Cualla with her little dolls… Failon, newly weaned, to your great relief. How can you say they are but a dream?"

Longing so pronounced it caused her physical pain coursed through Corinne as she imagined these children of whom Haldir spoke with such a wealth of love. **_Our_**_ children_, she thought with despair. "Please, Haldir," she entreated, trying not to cry. "You have to believe me. Look around. There are no children; we've never—" her throat protested again. "We've never made love. We're not in Caras Galadhon; we're trapped under Mertseger in Aker's realm, and you have to wake up because we have to get out of here."

Haldir did look around, and finding himself surrounded by seven people swinging from ragged and torn fabric wrappings and studiously avoiding looking at him while Corinne waited, watching him carefully, felt faint as reality returned to him. "Ai, Valar," he sighed heavily.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, hugging him. 

"As am I," he replied, refusing once again to meet her gaze. 

"Sorry to break up the angst-fest," Buffy called quietly from where she was clinging to Legolas like a monkey (much to his delight, if his luminous smile was any clue), but Thranduil, Radagast, and Spike are all missing."

"Something must have happened to them," Dawn said immediately. "If they'd gotten free on their own, they'd have woken the rest of us up. Wouldn't they?" she continued, only slightly uncertain. She didn't doubt Spike's rescue of her and the others at all, but Thranduil and Radagast were unknown quantities and the wizard in particular seemed unpredictable. "They would, right?"

***

Thranduil thanked the Valar for the ninth time that day for making him an elf of the forests; his many years of shimmying up trees served him well as he climbed nimbly up the sheer face of the cavern toward where Radagast was fixed against its wall. He was still wet from his impromptu dunking when the disagreeable adolescent god with the unhealthy fondness for snakes had allowed him to tumble into the waters below. It had taken all his considerable swimming ability to keep from drowning and instead make his way to the narrow strip of shore, but he had managed it. 

The gods had taken the vampire, still bound tightly, and disappeared through the waterfall just discernable at the far end of the cavern; they seemed content to leave their prisoners trussed like fowl waiting for the feast. There was no way he could reach his son and the others, though he would have greatly preferred to free them instead of the wizard, but Radagast was attainable and the others were not. Thranduil prided himself on his acceptance of facts, no matter how harsh they might be. He had not lied when he spoke of his wife; wiping his sweat-damp hand on the seat of his trousers before claiming another hold on the rock he climbed, he idly wondered why not.

"At last," he muttered upon reaching Radagast, and prayed the little ledges upon which he stood would hold throughout as he slipped a dagger free from its sheath and began carving the wizard from the fabric that bound him. Radagast came awake before he was completely uncovered, and began to struggle until Thranduil told him to be calm; he ceased wriggling but continued to gripe.

"Of all the beings in this accursed place, it would be you… and I have no doubt you will try to apply guilt for my rescue to make me assist your elves in defending the forest." The one eye that was thus far revealed shot the king a beady glare. "Do not think I will weaken in that regard, for I shall not."

"I would hope you would be made of sterner stuff," Thranduil agreed placidly, thinking fondly of how he would like to beat the wizard with his own staff. Like his son, he was a great fan of irony. "Would it not be a tragedy for a span of three thousand years of neglect to be broken?"

"Neglect?" Radagast demanded. "If that is how you see it, elf, then your eyes have failed you."

"That seems… unlikely," Thranduil replied smoothly, and cut the last strip. With a smile like the sun cresting the horizon, he watched as the wizard fell away from the wall with a short, sharp cry of surprise to hurtle toward the water hundreds of feet below. "There are such few pleasures to be had in an old elf's life," he said happily, and pushed off to follow after his adversary. 

He might get to liking this diving thing, he thought consideringly as the wind rushed through his hair. It was quite engaging, and certainly made one's blood flow faster. Perhaps a trip to the Rauros falls was in order when they returned to Arda… his body barely disturbed the surface of the water when he reached it at last, quite unlike the undignified and enormous splash that Radagast had caused a few moments before. 

Reaching out, he grabbed the wizard by the scruff of his rusty-robed neck and began swimming for the shore. Quite the invigorating experience this had been, indeed.

_Lle naa hûn nîn, herves nîn, amin mela lle _= You are my heart, my wife, I love you


	32. Chapter 31

Without, Part 31

It took the group a long time to decide that one of them was going to dive into the water and see how safe it was for the rest to do as well; it took even longer to decide which would be the one to do it. In the end it was agreed that Buffy would do it, not because it made the most sense, what with her being able to come back to life if she died, but because she shouted the loudest. 

And so, with a last kiss from her husband, a last hug from her sister, and quite fierce frowns from everyone else, she released her hold on Legolas and allowed herself to fall. Arms outstretched, eyes closed, it was a glorious feeling: air rushing past her, her body weightless, and then she remembered she had to dive or else hitting the water would **hurt**. She arranged herself into a diving position and braced herself for a shock of cold, but was pleasantly surprised to find the water was rather warm and pleasant, if somewhat mineral-tasting and cloudy.

With a few kicks of her powerful legs, she resurfaced and waved up at the group far above whom she knew had been waiting anxiously before making for shore. The current was insanely strong, coming as it did from the enormous waterfall at the far end of the long cavern; it kept trying to force her downstream and she had to thrash her arms with all her might to make it toward the shore. She was just about to heave herself onto the narrow strip of land when hands came out of seemingly nowhere and reached to lift her up.

"Thranduil!" she gasped. "You're…" He was soaking wet, summer-wheat hair cascading in long ringlets over the broad shoulders to which his sleeveless tunic clung like a second skin, revealing the hard contours of a flawlessly sculpted chest. Droplets of water sparkled in his sable lashes, framing his eyes like diamonds around emeralds, and as she watched, a single bead of water rolled sinuously down his throat to rest in the hollow of his throat. 

_Why couldn't he be balding and paunchy like a normal father-in-law?_ she wondered. Aloud, she finished her sentence. "You're ok."

He shot her a look that plainly declared, "_I'm far better than merely ok, you fool_," but only said, "Yes, as is Radagast. I do not know about the vampire; he was gone when I awoke."

"Where is Radagast?" Buffy asked. 

"Pouting," Thranduil replied. "He was not especially pleased to have a swim." He smiled. "A pity; I found it refreshing in the extreme." He led her around a jagged outcropping of rock where the wizard was sitting in an untidy heap, trying in vain to squeeze out the skirts of his robe. The ends of his moustache quivered in indignation as he lifted his head and spotted them approaching, but he said nothing. 

In short order they decided that the others had to come down; Buffy and Thranduil would help them to shore if they required assistance. Back on the shore, they motioned to the others and one by one the rest of the company descended with mighty splashes into the water. Legolas and Haldir went first, both managing quite well to combat the current, and then Arwen and Elessar with only a little more trouble. Dawn and Boromir did indeed need assistance to get to shore but with all the rest helping it was no trouble at all.

Gimli struck the water like a dead weight, immediately beginning to sink until Buffy and Legolas dragged him up and hauled him to land, spluttering the entire way about how undignified it was. They chalked his surly mood to having to wake from his happy dream, and left him to wring out his beard in peace as Corinne, the last to jump, plummeted to earth.

The first thing Corinne realized was that the water felt more like a warm embrace than a shock to the system; the second, and infinitely more distressing, was that she was breathing. Breathing and not drowning, that is. Running her hands over her face and neck, she found that little flaps had formed on either side of her throat.

"Oh, good," she said sourly, "I have gills. Perfect." Her voice was echoey and vibrated in the water that caressed and undulated around her, and she found that she was, instead of rising as most people are wont to do, dropping like a stone to the bottom. 

Above, she fancied the others were searching for her, but with low visibility, strong current, and their inability to match her newfound breathing apparatus, it wasn't looking good for them. She tried to leap up, to swim toward the surface, but her feet were as if rooted to the riverbed. She sighed, feeling the swish of water through her gills, and tried to figure out what she was supposed to do **now**. She wished, not for the first time since breaking the cartouche, that she could have kept her ability to think to Haldir. It would have come in handy right about now. 

"Greetings," said a voice from behind her, and the water around her cleared to crystal purity. Corinne spun clumsily to find a short, dumpy man with myriad braids in his dark hair standing before her. In each of his chubby hands he held a curvy vase, and delicately tinted gills fluttered on either side of his neck. Behind him, and coming swiftly to surround her as well, was a host of marine life: crocodiles, frogs, fish, eels. All eyed her with wariness, as if they forbore her presence only because they humored their lord.

"Hi," she replied uncertainly. "Do I have you to thank for the gills?"

He nodded and beamed at her. "It was indeed my pleasure," he replied, juggling his vases briefly to free one hand so he could shake hers and revealing that he happened to be sporting quite the loveliest set of breasts Corinne had ever had the good fortune to clap eyes on. High and firm, perfectly round, and capped with pretty pink nipples, they were every woman's fondest wish and every man's wet dream. 

"Wow," she murmured before she could catch herself, then blushed as the catalogue of her mind flipped to the entry containing 'man with breasts'. This, then, was Hapi, god of the Nile and, by extension, of fertility and fecundity. 

"Always I receive this reaction," Hapi said, and dimpled at her. "I find it amusing." He juggled the vases once more until there was one in each hand, decorously concealing His bosom, and Corinne found she could look at His face once more.

"Sorry," she said, embarrassed, but He waved her apology aside. 

"There is no time," He told her. "You must know that not all of the Netjeru side with Aker and Heka and the others; Seshat certainly does not, nor do I. We will do what we can to help you but fear it will not be much. Only know that in Seshat, in me, and in Her-Wer you have allies."

Eyes wide, Corinne nodded. 

"The vampire is being courted," Hapi continued. "Heka will try everything He can to win the vampire over; offer him anything and everything his unbeating heart might desire. Is he to be trusted?"

Corinne thought, and thought hard. She hadn't known Spike for long, only a few days, but in that time he'd saved her life time and again. She recalled his reaction when she'd mentioned Dawn and Mercas, remembered how gleefully he'd fought with Buffy until collapsing into tears of joy that he was with her again. He might not be completely reliable, but he'd die before doing anything to harm the Summers women; she knew this with utmost certainty.

"Yes," she said at last. "Yes, he is."

Hapi nodded. "For all our sakes, I hope you are right," He replied with a sigh. "For the future of all Arda and Aman rests on his shoulders."

It sounded distinctly ominous, and Corinne said so. 

"Would you rather I lie to you, scholar?" He asked with a faint, tired smile.

She felt her shoulders slump. "No," she admitted. "I'm just really ready to wake up from this bad dream now."

Hapi smiled at her again, and tipped the vases toward her. Automatically she held out her hands, and four petals spilled out, two from each vase.

"Lotus petals?" Corinne inquired, frowning. 

"To ensure what is already possible," Hapi told her mysteriously, stepping back. "You must go back now; your friends are… concerned." She read that to mean they were beside themselves with frantic worry, and thrust the petals into her back pocket with the palm frond Seshat had given her a few days ago. "Once you are with your companions once more, you must go beyond the waterfall." He motioned to the animals around them. "My children will bring you to them."

"Um… thanks," she replied uncertainly as two enormous crocodiles came forward. 

"Put your arms around their necks," the Nile god directed, and waved his vases at her cheerfully when the beasts began swimming forcefully upward. Clasping them tightly, she could only nod farewell, and then they were hurtling away. 

The water became murky once more, and she clung to the crocodiles as they seemed to slip between the currents rather than against them to speed toward the shore. Then with a lurch, they hauled themselves from the water, dragging her along with them onto the black sand. A shout sounded in the distance, but Corinne couldn't be bothered to try and put a face to it—she hadn't lost her gills yet and was gasping harshly. 

"Corinne," cried a voice, and Haldir dropped to his knees beside her, gathering her into his arms. "Corinne, _doll-nîn_," he whispered, his voice rough, trying to still her she began to convulse, her body starving for air. Then he caught sight of the madly wriggling gills on her throat and drew back a moment. 

The crocodiles, which Haldir had pushed roughly back, came forward once more. He growled at them, reaching for his daggers, but they merely grasped mouthfuls of her clothing and dragged her back into the water, too strong for him to prevent. Once submerged once more, Corinne stilled and her panic receded.

"Thank you," she said to the crocodiles, who seemed to nod before leaving her. Haldir was trying to hoist her out of the water again, but she slapped at his hands until he released her. His voice, above the surface, was muffled but she could tell he was speaking to the others before she began having trouble breathing, again. Hands to her neck, she discovered the gills were shrinking, and with a gasp she raised her head from the water.

Sputtering, she cleared her lungs with a bout of hacking that made her eyes water. "Holy crap," she exclaimed hoarsely as she collapsed into Haldir's arms, exhausted. He lowered her to the sandy shore but did not relinquish her, and she sank gratefully into his familiar embrace, face pressed against his shoulder as the others crowded round. "Met another god," she told them. "Hapi, god of the Nile. Wanted to let us know he's on our side, and so are a few others."

Corinne met Buffy's gaze, then Dawn's. "Heka's got Spike," she told them. "He's trying to bribe him to fight against us. I told him that Spike wouldn't do that." 

"That's right," Dawn said at once. Buffy just remained silent, but her eyes gained a faraway look to them that bespoke memories flooding to the forefront. 

"What do we do now?" Boromir asked, his arm looped around Dawn's waist.

"Hapi said we have to go through the waterfall," Corinne mentioned, pushing a hank of wet hair off her face and enjoying the feel of Haldir's arms around her once more even as she wondered when he'd remember he didn't want her anymore. 

"Why? What is there?" Elessar queried, staring at the waterfall in the distance as if she could see past it to what lay beyond.

"I don't know," Corinne admitted. "He just said we had to go." 

"And we believe him, why?" Buffy demanded. "Haven't felt a whole lot of love from the gods here."

"Well, Seshat was good to me," Corinne ventured. 

"She still dumped you out on Iw-n-sisi," Dawn pointed out. 

"I do not see that we have much choice," Radagast said. "We cannot go back the way we came." He gestured at the cavern around them. "There is nowhere else to go."

"So, we go, and stay on our guard and not trusting anyone," Buffy said. "After the misery that has been this entire trip, I can't say that'll be a stretch for me."

They had to scramble between two jagged boulders to squeeze behind the falls, but once they did they found themselves in another corridor, not unlike the first, but this time there were no minotaurs, no sirens, nothing.

"We must not drop our guard," Elessar told them after nearly an hour of walking without incident. "They but try to lull us with this peace."

"Give the man a prize," drawled a voice, and they all spun around to find Spike lounging against the fall, cigarette dangling negligently from his fingers.  "They didn't just make him king because of his stubble collection, hey?"

"Spike!" Dawn exclaimed, and rushed over to hug him. He gave her a lazy one-armed hug, smirking over her head at the rest of them. 

"Been having fun since last we were together?" he asked, eyes glinting in the torchlight. There was something… off about him, Corinne thought, and from the look on Buffy's face, she felt it too.

"Yeah," the Slayer replied flatly. "Loads of fun. Where've you been?"

"Had to see a man about a horse," Spike replied enigmatically, a note in his voice that made even Dawn pull away from him and study his face.

"Spike, what's going on?" she demanded. 

He tossed his cigarette butt with great nonchalance over his shoulder and ambled a few steps away from her. "Nibblet, who am I?"

She frowned. "Huh?"

He smiled then, a rather melancholy smile, it seemed to Corinne. "Just ask yourself that." Then in a dizzying blur of speed, his hand whipped out to grasp Corinne's upper arm and her last sight was of Haldir's face, both stern and alarmed, as she and the vampire disappeared from the corridor.

"Oh, for **fuck's** sake," she shouted as soon as they were corporeal again. "What in the **hell** are you doing? Buffy is going to eviscerate you when this is all over, you know." They were in a small chamber, the walls on three sides more elaborately carved stone, and the fourth wall seemed to be made of glass or crystal—Corinne could see through it to the huge room on the other side. 

Spike grinned at her, but it was strained. "Shut it and listen to me," he said, sidling close so he could speak directly into her ear. "I have to prove that I'm on their side, and committed to laying the smackdown on you lot. I took you because you can't fight, and you'll actually be somewhat safe here when the battle starts."

She blinked. "What are you talking about, Spike?" she asked softly. "What do you have to do? More importantly, what do **I** have to do?"

He sighed. "We have to pretend I'm havin' my way with you. And…" He hesitated. "I'm going to have to give you at least one or two marks, so it's believable. If I don't, we're both dead, and so're the rest of them." He cocked his head to the side, listening. "They're coming, we've got to do it soon."

"Great." _This just kept getting worse, didn't it?_ The impulse to fall to the ground and weep rose strongly in Corinne, and she closed her eyes to rally her courage. "Ok, do it."

His murmured advice to yell loud was unnecessary; the pain of the blow on her cheek was quite sufficient to make her cry out. 

"Corinne!" shouted a faint, female voice. "Oh, God, Legolas, they're hurting her." It was Buffy, and she was coming closer. 

"Here we go," Spike said grimly, and timed it so his next blow, though as light as the first, landed precisely atop it just as the company skidded around the corner into the room. She went with the motion and allowed her body to be knocked sideways so she tumbled to the floor at his feet 

"Ow," she said distinctly, cupping her cheek tenderly and glaring up at him, her anger not entirely feigned. 

"Spike, you pig," Buffy seethed, flying to the glass and pounding on it with clenched fists. "Let her out of there or I swear you'll wish I only staked your pathetic ass."

There was a minute flicker in his crystalline eyes; only someone who knew what he was up to would have picked up on it. And then he was laughing. "Big words from a tiny Slayer," he replied at last, grinning mischievously before reaching down to haul Corinne to her feet. At Buffy's side, Haldir clenched his teeth so hard the muscles of his jaw could be seen working.

"Ow," she repeated, trying to yank away from him. He backhanded her a third time, so confident in her acting ability that he barely touched her. Still, she fell over, hair falling messily over her face as she forced a tear to her eye. "I thought we were friends," she said, voice full of reproach.

With a final grin at the others glaring balefully from the protective barrier of the glass, he strolled over to her. "Friends," he repeated. "Yeah, we're friends." He dropped to his knees and wrapped his hand around her neck, thumb caressing her throat. "And we're gonna be even better friends, real soon."

A dull pounding made Spike look toward the glass; Gimli was slamming his axe with great determination against it, his face a study in resolve. Spike pushed his thumb harder into her throat, and her breath caught. "I suggest you stop that, dwarf," he said. "Or I kill her right now, before I get to sample her wares." He grinned lasciviously down at her and she was hard-pressed not to burst into anxious laughter.

_That would be what's known as an inappropriate response,_ she chastised herself when she saw the stricken faces on the other side of the glass. Spike's face pled with her to step up the act, so she began to gasp and thrash in his grip as if beginning to suffocate. Predictably, Gimli lowered his axe, though his eyes burned with no less fury.

With a sudden wrench, Spike tore Corinne's shirt off her. _At least I wore my best bra,_ she thought irrelevantly, and lashed out with her feet. One caught him in the stomach, and he reeled back for long enough to allow her to dart up and across the chamber, but there was nowhere to go—no door, no window. No escape. 

Before she had taken two steps, Spike had caught her, grabbing her and throwing her to the hard floor before dropping down onto her, hands roughly pulling her legs around his narrow hips. She reach out to claw at his face, push at his shoulders, anything, but he trapped her wrists in a crushing grip and yanked them over her head. Over the rushing in her ears as her heartbeat pounded, she heard Haldir bellowing her name.

"Don't do this," she begged, hating herself for begging at the same time she hoped he understood what he meant. Spike gave an infinitesimal nod and turned to look at their frantic audience. 

"Much as I love the idea of having you fine folk see exactly why I'm the Big Bad," Spike said, gyrating his hips lewdly into the V of her thighs,  "the schoolgirl here doesn't want to share such a private moment with you lot. And I find myself feeling… generous." He grinned down at her heaving breasts, spilling over the lacy cups of her bra. "Among other things." He punctuated his words with another raunchy bump-and-grind as the glass began to cloud and grow opaque, and Haldir flung himself once more against the barrier, hacking at it with his knives in a fury. 

"I will flay you," the elf promised, his voice almost too soft to be heard. "You will beg me to end your torment."

Then it was solid rock between them, and nothing more could be seen of the other side. "Oi, Heka!" Spike shouted. "I want some privacy, so you lot can just sod off."

Laughter echoed through the chamber. "As you wish," came the disembodied voice of the god, and the torches winked out, leaving them in complete darkness.

Gingerly, Spike lifted himself off Corinne and removed his duster. Under it he wore both a shirt and t-shirt, and he took off the red oxford to settle it over her shoulders. "There," he said, somewhat shakily, and she understood the great price he'd paid to have Buffy look at him like that. As if he were a filthy monster she wanted to crush under her boot like a bug.

She slipped her arms into it, buttoning it up to the neck before rolling its long sleeves to her elbows, moving very precisely in the pitch-blackness that surrounded them, feeling soothed by the rote motions. "How long do we pretend we're at it?" she asked.

"As long as possible," was the reply. "Because as soon as they think we're done, they're going to attack, and I want to buy Buffy and the rest as much time as I can." He laughed, a short and humorless sound that echoed roughly off the walls. "This isn't going to be pretty, pet." 

There was a click as he snapped open his lighter, and his face was thrown for a moment into sharp relief by the flame as he lit his cigarette. He closed it again with another snap, and there were plunged once more into darkness as the pungent smell of the smoke swirled around them. "Not pretty at all."


	33. Chapter 32

Author's Note: So, here's Aker, at long last. I hope he's suitably menacing n' stuff. Please let me know if you feel let down, I'll make him more evilish.

Like always, I am spazzing out about how my action scenes are. Please review and tell me if I do a good job with the tension and excitement—is it tense? Exciting? Or did I miss entirely?

Oh, and please don't hate me for what I do to one of them. We've all gotta die sometime.

Without, Part 32

Spike spent much of their brief time together going over the exact way to snap a person's neck. Corinne, for her part, explained how he had to get the gods' talismans away so they'd be vulnerable before she lapsed into a guilt-ridden silence, the image of Haldir's stricken face before her eyes. 

"Do you think they'll forgive us for the deception?" she asked softly.

Spike was silent a moment. "The Nibblet will," he said at last. "Buffy will, after Dawn nags at her a while. Haldir… might." He heaved a sigh. "This is the price for looking at the big picture, pet. Sacrifices have to be made."

"What if they don't forgive us?" she asked, appalled at the idea. "Ever? What then?"

Spike chuckled mirthlessly. "Then we set out together, two outcastes." He took a last drag from his fag, the tip glowing brightly in the gloom, and stubbed it out on the floor. "You good for anything besides studyin', she-Giles?"

"Not really," Corinne said glumly. "You good for anything besides killing things and making snarky comments?"

"Not really," he admitted, equally glum as his cockiness slipped for a moment.. "Those have always been my greatest strengths."

She slumped against the wall. "We're doomed."

The torches flared to life at that point. "Perhaps sooner than we'd anticipated," Spike murmured, getting to his feet. "Remember, I've just given you the business, you're shattered and broken."

"Yeah, yeah," she grumbled. "Emotionally traumatized, warped forever, and—holy shit!" she interrupted herself with the exclamation of surprise because, materializing before her, was not only Heka and Tayet, but the god Himself, the one who'd started it all: Aker.

He was built as massively as the minotaurs, but His skin was covered with a fine yellow pelt, like a lion's. His face was an odd blend of human and feline features, especially in the flattish nose and thin-lipped mouth. A large medallion, of a red disc with a thick chain round his neck, gleamed dully in the torchlight. Thick, shaggy golden hair coursed over His brawny shoulders in a gleaming river that vied for brilliance with the speculative sheen of His black-rimmed tawny eyes, alarmingly feral as He bared pointed teeth in what she supposed was meant to be a smile.

"Corinne Williams," Aker rumbled, His voice coming from His chest like an eruption from a volcano: deep, ominous, and infinitely worrisome. "You have caused me great anxiety." He said it almost playfully, and she half-expected Him to wag a finger at her in admonishment. 

"My apologies," she said flippantly, not sorry at all. "I feel terrible, helping to thwart chaos and mayhem like that. Can you ever forgive me?"

In a flash, Aker had reached out and grasped a handful of her hair, lifting her to dangle a foot off the floor. Pain rocketed through her scalp and she reached up to try and free herself or at least alleviate some of the agony. "No, I don't think so," Aker murmured over the wails Corinne emitted.

"Oi, Lion King, how about you let her go?" Spike suggested, thumbs stuck in the loops of his belt as he watched from the side. "I don't fancy my bird being snatched bald, if it's all the same to you."

Aker flung Corinne from him so she slid along on her butt and hit the wall. "As you wish," he replied coldly. "I do not understand why you wish to keep her intact. Drain her and be done with it."

"I like when they fight," Spike replied with a rude grin at her as she rubbed her scalp with her fingertips, trying to alleviate the pain that still shot through her. 

Aker gave a surprisingly delicate shudder of distaste and continued. "All is prepared? They suspect nothing?"

"Nope," the vampire replied cheerfully. "Just that I'm fighting with you lot now, instead of with them. They don't know—" he made a great show of glancing nervously toward the wall, as if afraid to have their plans overheard "—how I've told you all their weaknesses."

"Excellent," Aker replied in his growly voice, and turned to the wall. Immediately, it faded to transparency once more. 

Buffy and company were in varying stages of rage: She stood stock-still in the middle of the floor, eyes shut as she breathed rhythmically, clenching and unclenching her fists, totally ignoring how Dawn was trying desperately to entreat her sister to forgive Spike. The vampire forced a carefree grin to his face, but Corinne could see the bleak expression in his eyes—it was killing him to see the Summers women hurting over his actions, no matter how necessary they might be.

Arwen's face was as beautiful, flawless, and hard as a diamond as she inspected her arrows beside Thranduil, who could not quite hide the admiring glances he sent her way, much to Elessar's displeasure as that king sat cross-legged beside Boromir on the floor and sharpened his sword. They weren't the only ones sharpening: Legolas and Gimli were giving their own weapons a thorough going-over, and Haldir in particular had a look of great enjoyment to come as he ran the whetstone over the already-deadly edges of his long daggers. 

Radagast alone seemed separate from the barrage of emotion, apparently waiting for the wall to disappear once more, for he didn't seem at all surprised when their opponents and Corinne became visible through it. Straightening from his slouch against the wall, he leaned on his staff and called the others to attention. One by one, they turned and got their first glimpse of the god that had tormented them for so long.

Aker stood proudly and fearlessly before them, but Corinne suspected that had much to do with the impenetrable wall between him and them. 

"So, it's Mr. Let's-Cause-Everyone-Honkin'-Big-Buttloads-of-Pain," Buffy snarled, stepping close to the barrier.

He gave her a thin smile. "Hm, yes. I'm just going by Aker now, actually."

"You're going to be going by Grease Spot on the Floor when I'm through with you," she replied, and pounded her fist on the glass when he just threw back his leonine head and laughed.

"I am not called Yesterday and Tomorrow for naught, Slayer," Aker said at last. The air around him shimmered, and suddenly he had two heads; "I am eternal, and far beyond your abilities to destroy." It shimmered again, and he was back to one head, but now he wasn't remotely humanoid, but entirely lion. He could still speak, however: "And then there is the matter of bending reality; it is my gift, my specialty, my talent."

"I have a gift, too," she informed him. "Death. And I'm good at it." She whipped around and in a single, blurringly-fast move, launched a small throwing dagger at the first minotaur that rounded the corner into the huge room. It lodged between its eyes, and it sank with a sigh to the floor, stone dead. 

There was a tumultuous roar, and a phalanx of minotaurs barreled in. Buffy and the other immediately moved to engage them. The elves, Buffy, Elessar, and Boromir with Satet's bow immediately loosed a volley of arrows, taking down the closely-bunched enemy with great ease, as well as the next bunch that surged into the chamber. 

"What is this?" Aker demanded, turning to Spike. "You assured me that preventing separation of the troops would disconcert them!"

"And look how disconcerted they are!" Spike protested, launching into spin-control. "They're all confused at how easy that was! They'll become overconfident." His blue eyes flicked toward them; they were, indeed, looking rather self-congratulatory. "Time for the next salvo. There's no way three women will be able to fight off the next bunch."

Before he even finished speaking, a familiar keening sound began to echo off the stone walls, and the males began to gain that dreamy, abstracted expression, weapons falling uselessly to the floor as a fleet of sirens wafted into the room. These were faster than the others, for they were able to dodge the arrows Buffy and Arwen sent flying at them. Dawn snatched Satet's bow from her husband's useless hand and began to pick them off, each missile finding its elusive target without effort. 

Aker seemed to swell with fury; on His either side, Tayet and Heka weren't any happier. The goddess lifted Her arm, intended to create more of those insidious threads, but Corinne found herself darting across the room and snatching the spindle from Her surprised grasp and flinging it over her shoulder. With a muttered prayer to anyone listening that she was doing this right, she grabbed each of Tayet's ears and, with a sudden wrench, broke Her neck. The goddess gave a single, surprised "oh" before slumping, lifeless, to the ground. 

Spike's expression of amazement was quickly replaced with feigned anger. "You stupid bint!" he shouted, and pretended to punch her before lobbing the stone spindle at her, hitting her in the stomach and knocking her backward to land on her butt in the corner. "I should kill you instead of just knock you unconscious."

Taking it as a hint, she obligingly went limp, pretending she was knocked out, but listened carefully as Spike joined Aker and Heka in raging over the loss of Tayet, who'd been one of their aces in the hole as it were. 

"Just move on to the hand-to-hand," Spike was telling them as it became clear that, even with only one bow able to strike the sirens, it was just a matter of time before the creatures were all gone and the men could fight once more. "Elves are bleedin' tragic in close quarters; once they're out of the way, it won't take long to subdue the rest."

Corinne remembered the loving way Haldir and Legolas had been tending their daggers, and the various occasions she'd seen them wielded against the enemy, and had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. She imagined that Thranduil and Arwen were just as talented with their blades. No, it wouldn't take long—for the elves. 

The last siren perished with a sad "oh, ohh, owwwhhhh," and Buffy quipped, "And then there were none! Good work, Dawnie!"

But her sister was grumbling as she thrust the bow back at Boromir with a scarcely concealed glare. "Even Corinne can use that bow, Buffy. I had nothing to do with it." Corinne frowned; that kind of cattiness wasn't necessary, she felt, and vowed to have words with Dawn when this whole debacle was over.

Then she realized what she'd just thought—when it was over. With a growing sense of awe, she realized that she believed, with all her might, that they were going to win this. She had no idea how, or when, but somehow she knew Buffy and Haldir and Elessar and the rest would prevail. There was not the slightest doubt in her mind.

Heartened, she ventured a peep from under lowered lashes and found that another, absolutely mammoth, brigade of minotaurs had entered the room and launched itself at her friends. With no room to maneuver their bows, the elves discarded them and withdrew their daggers; the weapons sprang free of their sheaths with deadly hisses that got Heka's snakes rather excited—both lifted their heads and gazed with interest through the window, tongues flicking experimentally. 

They both drew back in surprise when Arwen, of all people, flew forward and began wreaking havoc. Her right dagger sank into the fleshy bit between neck and shoulder of one minotaur before ripping through, leaving a gaping wound where throat used to be; her left stabbed deeply into the gap between chest-armour and hip-armour of another. Then she jerked both free at the same time and rounded on the next two.

Galvanized into motion, the company set to work, and Corinne slowly inched to her feet when she felt confident that both gods were too concerned with watching the battle to pay attention to her. "Nothing to see here," she chanted in her mind, willing Them not to notice how she was creeping closer. If only she could get her hands on that ankh-collar that Heka wore, but He had at least forty pounds of Egyptian asp draped around His neck…

Spike began, in his hyperactive way, to tap his boot on the floor, and one of the snakes slithered down Heka's leg to investigate more closely. The other soon began to follow, disengaging from Heka's shoulders to wind around His slender waist, and Corinne saw her chance. She ran up, soundless in her rubber-soled runners, but somehow Heka knew she was there and spun to face her.

"Your treachery has earned your death," Heka said, voice low and venomous, and reached out a hand to her, instantly she felt a crushing sort of pain flood her and sank to her knees, unable to hold herself upright, at the same time that her vision narrowed to pinpoints. A taste like copper filled her mouth and she realized, idly, that she'd bitten through her tongue. 

Then something cool, hard, and metallic landed on her. The pain stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and she realized that Spike had taken Heka's collar and tossed it like a game of horseshoes around her neck. Blinking, she was just in time to see his face alter to its demon-visage before he leant close and ripped out Heka's throat. Spitting out the ragged piece of flesh, he took a deep draught of the god's blood before dropping the slight body to the floor. 

Aker's big shoulders tensed, and he slowly turned to face them. "So," he began conversationally, "you betray me, vampire."

Spike wiped Heka's blood from his chin with his sleeve and offered the god a jaunty grin. "Yeah, well, we're not known for our fidelity to manipulative sods like yourself," he replied. "Or to anyone, really. Caveat emptor, and all that rot."

"Indeed," Aker replied noncommittally, a faint smile on his lips, and then his hand was around Corinne's throat, squeezing. _Again with the pain,_ she thought with strange irony as agony crashed over her for the second time in as many minutes and she clawed at his hands with her nails. There was only time to hear Spike snarl and feel the whoosh of air as he leapt onto the lion-god before consciousness and life faded. "Haldir," she tried to whisper, but her larynx was crushed, and then there was just pain fading to blackness as Aker flung her from him to land hard on the floor. 

In the middle of the pitched battle, Haldir felt something pass by him, a breeze or something, chill and ominous and lonely, and with one last thrust of his dagger, killed the minotaur he'd been fighting before surveying his surroundings. All around him, his companions were fighting heatedly. Buffy was, as he would expect, taking on three minotaurs at once; Legolas and Gimli fought back-to-back in the midst of a growing pile of dead bodies and Dawn was using her pike over the heads of Boromir and Elessar as Arwen and Thranduil fought on their flanks. Radagast was employing his old rock-chucking scheme as before, and seemed to be enjoying reasonable success, as a goodly number of foes lay lifeless around him, great dents in their sizable skulls. 

He turned, then, toward the glass wall and found to his shock that Aker was being attacked by none other than the vampire himself, and with a ferocity that immediately made Haldir suspicious. Spike's face was outraged, furious, and—could it be?—vengeful. What could he want revenge for? Haldir pushed his way through the throng toward the wall, and when the last minotaur between him and the glass fell to his twin blades, saw why.

Corinne lay in an untidy heap on the stone floor, hair tangled over her face but not hiding the fact that a trickle of blood ran down her cheek to pool in the whorls of her ear. The skin of her throat, which he recalled spending many pleasurable moments kissing and laving with his tongue, was mottled with bruises and looked misshapen somehow, not at all the smooth column of his recollection. In spite of the fight between Spike and Aker she was still, unnaturally so, and he realized with a jolt that she was not breathing. 

"No," he whispered, pressing his palms flat against the clear wall. "Elbereth, Iluvatar, please, no."

The battle receded from him then; all motion and sound disappeared. Disbelief swelled within him. It was not possible that this woman, with such passion for learning and such ambition to teach and share, could be dead. That she would never frown at him again, that she would never again pepper Celeborn with questions about the earlier ages, or scribble furiously in her notebooks about some obscure and probably useless fact or measurement. 

He recalled how he'd rebuffed her, recalled how soft her voice had been when she'd said she loved him. "Please don't do this to us," she'd begged, and then shouted that he was a coward when he'd refused her. And he **had** been a coward, a blind and stubborn one, fearing to trust her, fearing to show himself as weak before her in his pain. Had he not thrust her away, she perhaps would be alive now, warm and breathing, and her eyes would be soft as they glowed with her love for him. Alive, instead of the cooling corpse that lay so tantalizingly and obscenely out of his reach. 

"A coward no longer," he vowed, breath steaming the glass. "A coward, never again."

He stepped back in preparation of—something, anything to vent the anguish and misery and rage within his soul, and it was a good thing, too, because Spike then punched Aker so forcefully that the god went sprawling back and crashed through the glass barrier, spraying shards like needles through the air before landing on His back at Haldir's feet.

Silence seemed to reign for a moment after that; one by one, the minotaur fell to their opponents until Buffy finished off the last of them and wiped her sword clean on its clothing. "Aker," she said, staring at him, eyes slitted. "You have no idea how much thrashing you is going to improve my day."


	34. Chapter 33

Author's Note: Her-Wer is the Kemetic name for Horus, son of Wesir (Osirus) and Aset (Isis). Yes, we're getting to the point of mentioning Egyptian gods of whom you actually might have heard.

Without, Part 33

"Aker," Buffy said, staring at him, eyes slitted. "You have no idea how much thrashing you is going to improve my day." 

"You may try," He replied, springing lightly to his feet. "You may try." There was a flash of light, and he was gone.

"Goddamit!" Buffy yelled. "Why didn't anyone tell me he could just beam out of here? Corinne! You're supposed to be the ex…pert," she finished lamely when, after looking around for the woman, she found her: cradled in Spike's arms, limp, and most definitely dead.

"I'm sorry," the vampire said, his voice low. "I couldn't get him to let go of her, it happened too fast."

Haldir was there before Buffy could take a step, taking Corinne in one arm while the other sent Spike flying across the chamber. "You will not touch her," he hissed. "You will not even **look** at her with your unclean eyes, foul thing, beast…" His words trailed off then as he gathered Corinne to him and looked down at her, his face anguished. 

Buffy strode across the chamber to Spike, a stake appearing as if by magic in her hand, and hoisted him up to her eye level by means of grasping his throat in her tiny fist and hauling hard. "You piece of filth," she said between gritted teeth. "Give me one reason I shouldn't stake you right now."

"Buffy!" Dawn cried, flying toward them. "Put him down! I'm sure he had a plan of some sort, which tragically misfired or something…" 

Spike nodded in energetic agreement above Buffy's fist. "Sure do, Slayer," he said, voice raspy from her stranglehold.

Dropping him as if his touch polluted her, Buffy stepped back and crossed her arms. "Spill," she commanded  "And if I don't believe you, you're gonna fit in an ashtray in about two point eight seconds."

"They tried to bribe me," Spike explained roughly, rubbing his throat with his hand and shooting grateful looks at Dawn, who had taken place beside her sister and mimicked her pose if not her skeptical and threatening expression. "Said they'd give me anything I wanted, if I helped them. And," he continued meaningfully, "I mean, **anything**." 

Buffy coloured faintly at that; she had an excellent idea of what he meant. With the perception of the in-love and married, she sensed Legolas tensing up. "And?"

"And, I saw an opportunity to get a bit of information out of them. Be an undercover operative, as it were," he said, trying to reclothe himself in his cocky persona by altering his stance to that of the Big Bad he'd once been and pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Lighting one with a flourish, he snapped the lighter closed and pocketed it before blowing out a cloud of smoke and continuing. "I told them all your battle secrets, or so they thought, the stupid sods." He chuckled mirthlessly. "They believed whatever I said. Weren't you surprised it was so easy to kill those minotaur blokes?"

Buffy nodded slowly, grudgingly. "It was like they were doing everything that was easiest for us to smackdown," she admitted.

"Because they were," Spike told her. "And I took Corinne because I thought she'd be safest on this side of the glass, with me and the gods. I never meant—" He broke off and looked away, visibly struggling for composure. "I never meant for this to happen to her," he finished at last. "If she hadn't gotten all heroic and killed that one—" he motioned to Tayet, whose head lay at a gruesome angle to her neck "—none of this would have happened!"

Elessar blinked. "Corinne killed a god? Without assistance?"

Spike beamed proudly. "Yep, wrung her neck, just like I told her. She was a fast study, this one." He sobered then, his gaze resting on Corinne once more; a lock of Haldir's hair had fallen over her throat like a pale silk ribbon, hiding the contusions that were evidence of her murder. "I'm sorry," he told the elf. "I never raped her, or hurt her other than hitting her lightly a few times, so the gods would believe I was abusing her." His gaze rested on her a moment before meeting Haldir's. "I liked the schoolgirl."

Gray eyes locked with blue, and after an endless moment, Haldir nodded shortly, accepting Spike's apology. 

"See, Buffy?" Dawn burbled. "I told you there was an explanation."

But Buffy wasn't completely appeased. "Don't do anything like that again," she told him crossly. "Your judgment has never been the best, and it usually ends up a disaster. This is just another example of that." He hung his head, and she continued. "But I'm glad you stayed on our side." His head came up again, and he offered her a tremulous smile, which she returned for a scant moment before getting back to business. "Haldir," she said to her friend, her voice soft.

He was staring down at Corinne as if expecting her to wake up any moment. "She is dead." He looked up at Buffy, silver gaze clouded with misery and disbelief.

Buffy came to him then, and wrapped her arms around him and Corinne, resting her forehead against his shoulder. "I know, Hal," she replied. "I know, and I'm sorry. But we have to find Aker. We can't let him get away."

There was another flash, and everyone tensed to do battle, but before them stood not Aker, but a woman. She wore a leopard skin and not much else, but in the centre of her forehead blazed a lotus-shaped jewel. "I am Seshat," the woman told them, looking with sorrow at Corinne. "This one was my daughter, and loath am I to see her death, for it bodes ill for your world and mine. Will you not give her to me?"

Buffy blinked. "**Give** her to you?"

"You do not wish to leave her here, I am sure," said Seshat, "and the battle you will wage with Aker is no place for her." 

"So, this thing with Aker isn't over yet?" Dawn asked, eyes round with apprehension.

"Indeed not," Seshat answered. "Her-Wer will be here shortly to assist you in locating Aker, for his hawks have been watching since you came to this place."

Thranduil arched a golden brow. "Did I not say there were far too many hawks than was reasonable, Greenleaf?" 

"Yes, _Ada_," Legolas replied tiredly. "And kindly do not call me that."

"What about these fallen gods?" Elessar inquired, gesturing to Tayet and Heka. "Corinne killed one, and the vampire took down the other."

Seshat turned to survey Spike; he returned her regard, quirking his scarred brow arrogantly. "You drank deeply of Satet, I understand," she murmured, eyes dark and liquid as she studied him. 

He nodded. "That I did."

"Do you feel… differently, since then?" she asked lightly, but there was an intensity in her eyes that put him on alert.

"Now that you mention it, yeah," he admitted. "Faster, and stronger. I punched that wanker right through the wall; couldn't have done that before…"

"Before what?" Buffy asked, curious.

Spike blinked in surprise, as if just realizing something. "Before I drained Satet." He turned to Seshat. "Is there some sort of powerful juju to god's blood?"

She nodded slowly. "I am not sure of the effect if will have you on altogether, or how long it will last, but yes. For the time being at least, you are…for lack of another way to express it… a god yourself."

Both of his eyebrows shot up this time. "You hear that, Nibblet?" he demanded of Dawn, grinning maniacally. "I'm a god."

She rolled her eyes and punched his shoulder. "Ok, god-guy, then transport us to Aker so we can kick his ass." 

But he was eyeing Heka's and Tayet's corpses speculatively and paying no attention to her whatsoever. "If I eat them, will I be more god-like?" he asked Seshat. Buffy and Dawn exchanged an 'oh, we've created a monster' sort of look, whilst the others merely appeared queasy at the notion.

Seshat, however, had the gleam in scholarship in her eye that they recognized from spending time with Corinne. "I do not know," she replied. "You should try it and see." Spike approached the gods' corpses and everyone else stepped away, not wanting to see or hear his delighted feasting. 

Buffy opened her mouth to speak but at that precise moment a bird's cry echoed through the huge room; it was as if the sound had come from her and the others began to laugh, more from a dire need to break the tension and sadness than from actual humour. Even Haldir was able to summon a credible, if tight, smile. 

"Ah," Seshat said, and beamed. "Her-Wer has come."

A raptor of immense size flew into the room, and as they watched it transformed into the figure of a man: tall, well-built, with the head of a hawk. His pupilless eyes were of solid color: one of silver, the other of gold. When He spoke, His voice held the echoes of the canyons and cliffs through which his brethren would soar in pursuit of prey.

"My sister," he greeted the goddess.

She bowed to him, silken jetty tresses slipping forward over smooth caramel shoulders. "My brother."

"I will assist them from this point, you may take your child and depart." Her-Wer held out His arms to Haldir, who reluctantly relinquished Corinne's body. "_Nehktet," the god murmured, then kissed Corinne's forehead before passing her to Seshat. _

The goddess smiled at Haldir. "She loved you greatly, elf, for she gave up her fondest dream to keep you safe. Be proud to have enjoyed such devotion from one who served me, for we are not known for our passions for anything but learning. It is notable indeed that she would give her heart to you."

A rough sound, quickly choked back, emerged from Haldir; he nodded solemnly and turned away to study Spike, who was done with Heka and had moved on to Tayet. Seshat nodded to the others and vanished in a brilliant flash of light. 

"I bring you now to Aker," Her-Wer told them. "I regret I cannot help you in this battle, for it is not yet my time to make my support of you known. But be aware, I see now the truth of what befalls your world and how some of the Netjeru have come to serve the dark. You fight alone no longer."

Spike stood then, grinning giddily. "That's the stuff," he burbled happily, staggering like a drunk over to Dawn and looping his arm around her neck, more for support than affection. Sighing, she grabbed his wrist to help keep him upright. "Let's go, Bird-Boy," he said to Her-Wer. 

The god's face, though covered in feathers and possessing a beak, yet managed to convey a sense of amusement and pique at the same time; He nodded and in the blink of an eye, they were no longer in a stone chamber deep within Mertsegur, but in the middle of a vast canyon. Steep dunes rose on all sides in the distance, shimmering in the piercing desert sun, and sand drifted in the wind and shifted under their feet.

But aside from their group, the canyon was vacant. "There is no one here," Gimli complained. "No one but us." He seemed greatly disappointed that there was no mayhem forthcoming.

Somehow, Her-Wer managed to make His beak smile. "Give it a minute," He replied, and turned back into a hawk. With a cry that bounced off the dunes, He soared up into the sky of hard, bright blue, circled once over them, and departed.

Buffy watched until the god was merely a tiny black speck in the sky, and then He was gone, too far even for her exceptional sight. "Crap," she sighed. "Now what?"

"Now," Aker said, appearing behind her, golden sword in hand, "we fight."

***

Buffy turned slowly, and all marveled at how her face, her pretty little face, could so swiftly and completely alter to that of a warrior. Her features settled into lines that were fierce, and determined, and very, very deadly. 

"You took off before we could chat," she scolded, and the sunlight flashed off her sword as she pounced on him, striking swiftly. "Didn't your mother ever tell you it was rude to leave in the middle of a conversation?"

Aker deflected her blow with His own weapon and stepped back, surprisingly nimble on His big, pawlike feet, mane of golden hair dancing in the wind that moaned around them. "You have my sincerest apologies," He replied, and thrust His sword at her.

"For some reason, I don't completely believe you." She pivoted on one foot, then curved sideways into a one-handed handstand, springing up and over His head to land behind Him. "Must be all the deception and manipulation we've enjoyed since you came into our lives." She swung at Him, and connected with His shoulder, severing arm from torso. 

Aker grunted in pain, but before Buffy could press her attack, His arm flew up from the ground and reaffixed itself. "There is no need for you to fight me," He told her, consternation plain on his face. Was it just her, or was he beginning to look more like a lion? "You can join the Netjeru who align with Melkor. We shall rule all of Arda and Aman together. Battling against us is pointless."

Buffy sighed. "I disagree," she contradicted. "It's entirely pointy. You've mind-raped all of us, you killed Corinne. I'm not just going to say, 'hey, water under the bridge, old buddy!' and team up with you." She turned her sword at him again in a flurry of blows, slashing and thrusting so quickly she was a mere blur, and connecting more often than not, but each injury swiftly healed itself. Her frustration communicated itself to her husband, who began to make his way behind their foe. Before he could get anywhere near Aker, however, the god's head began to vibrate.

Buffy's eyes rounded in surprise. "Huh?" Then, "Gah!" when Aker's head split down the middle, and each half grew into a full head of its own.

"You see now my true nature," He told her with the left head, while the right one turned to fix a beady golden eye on Legolas. "I see yesterday and tomorrow; I see east and west." His lipless mouth curved into a sneer. "There is nothing you can do to surprise me."

"Are you **quite** sure of that?" asked Radagast, smirking from under his drooping mustache as he aimed his staff at the god. Dawn stood beside him, a small portal open between them, and his free hand was thrust into it as energy surged up his arm, flowing into him. A bolt of pure green light streaked toward Aker and hit Him directly in the red disc medallion that adorned his neck. A spray of multicolored light shot from the ruptured disc and the air around them was filled with the sound of shattering glass. Aker fell to His knees, both mouths roaring in fury and pain. 

"I bet that surprised you," Dawn crowed, and His right head turned to glare at her. 

"This is yet far from over," it informed her coldly. In a single agile move, He was on His feet once more, and with a murmur had caused a second sword to form in his other hand just as Legolas came at him from one side, long white knives glinting, and Buffy rushed him from the other.

"We attack," Elessar commanded softly, voice carrying on the wind. "He cannot defend against all of us at once." And with that, the rest of them rushed at the god.

"Think you I cannot?" Aker said with a doglike bark of laughter. "Foolish, foolish." With a mighty spring, he launched himself away from them; in mid air, his body began to split down the centre from his neck, forming into two enormous lions. As they skidded to a halt and watched in horror, the lions' heads split and grew into two heads, and then their bodies divided again and again and again until there were sixteen lions, snarling and pawing, bodies tensed poised to strike. 

"He's like some sort of creepy evil amoeba," Dawn complained, adjusting her grip on her pike. 

"Everyone back to back," Buffy called, advancing on the lions with grim determination. "Don't let them get behind you." Obediently, they paired up and began to fight the lions; spouses together and Gimli with Haldir. Radagast and Thranduil each heaved a sigh of resignation before taking battle stances beside each other. 

"There are too many," Haldir called after a few minutes of silent, intense fighting; the lions were bigger than cows and armed with not only sharp fangs but razor-like claws as well; already several of their company sported long slashes and Dawn was leaving little portals all over the place from where their lion had raked her arm.

"We'll have to double up," Buffy replied. "Dawn, stay close to Boromir and fight over his head. Gimli, Radagast, Arwen, Elessar, Thranduil: just concentrate on one lion each. Legolas, Spike, and Haldir: take two each. I'll take the last three."

With that, she launched herself into action, hacking at one of the lions she'd claimed for herself. It didn't take long for her to fell her first: a handspring through the air and judicious bit of swordwork resulted in its swift beheading. 

The second proved more troublesome: it knocked her to the ground and the sword from her hand, and only Buffy's immense strength allowed her to hold its slavering head and sharp teeth away from her throat. She couldn't see the third one, but from the growls that were coming closer she suspected it wasn't far away. 

She began a double-pronged attack on the lion sitting on her chest and trying to kill her: first, she gripped it around its muzzle with one hand, holding its mouth closed while she groped frantically for a knife; second, she started kicking it viciously in its belly and lower, hoping that divine lions were as susceptible as any other male creature to a boot in the nuts. 

Her foot connected with the lion's nether region at the same moment she found a dagger and jammed it into its throat; hot blood, red and sticky, coursed out over her and she had to heave mightily to dislodge the shuddering thing from her. There was barely a moment to even locate her sword, let alone grab it, before the second lion was on her, mouth stretched wide to rip out her throat.

_nehktet_ = victory


	35. Chapter 34

Author's Note: more pulling stuff out of my butt for this one, especially as concerns Yinepu, who is more commonly known by the Grecianization of his name, Anubis. 

Dedicated to all those authors who, despite receiving acclaim and praise, don't take themselves too seriously and maintain a sense of the ridiculous. This ain't brain surgery, folks. It's just fanfic. 

Without, Part 34

Buffy's foot connected with the lion's nether region at the same moment she found a dagger and jammed it into its throat; hot blood, red and sticky, coursed out over her and she had to heave mightily to dislodge the shuddering thing from her. There was barely a moment to even locate her sword, let alone grab it, before the second lion was on her, mouth stretched wide to rip out her throat.

It wrapped its huge jaws around her shoulder and sank long fangs into her flesh, lifting her from the ground and grating over the flat of her shoulder blade, shaking her like a rag doll so that she had great trouble aiming her sword between its shoulder blades and stabbing downward, but she managed it. With a final agonized cry and rake of claws across her back, the lion collapsed and twitched a little before dying, teeth still buried in her. The wounds made pain flash like fire through her, and she experienced the usual narrowing of vision and dimming of hearing that accompanied a fatal wound. 

At her cry of pain, Legolas glanced over; he'd already killed one of his lions and stood battling the second. "Go to her," Haldir yelled, finishing off his second and moving to intercept Legolas'. 

He ran to her and yanked the lion's corpse away; the four puncture wounds were messily oozing blood but they were not too serious. What had him concerned were the ribbons of skin and muscle the creature had flayed from her back. "Elbereth," he murmured as he gently leaned her forward against his arm and lifted her braid away, the better to inspect her injuries, and saw the gleam of bloody bone in the brilliant sunlight—ribs and spine. She would not survive this, he knew.

"Dying again," she gasped, wincing at the agony that coursed through her.

"Yes," he agreed unhappily, peering over her head at the others. Gimli had killed his lion and was trotting around offering assistance to the rest; Thranduil had made short work of his lion and was doing likewise, but shot the occasional concerned glance toward his son and daughter-in-law. 

"If I come back and He's still not dead, I'm gonna be pissed," she warned weakly as Legolas clasped her carefully in his arms. Gimli joined them then, wringing his hands and making concerned clucking noises as he always did when Buffy died.

"If the look on Haldir's face portends the future, I doubt there will be much left for you to worry over," Legolas replied, pressing a kiss to her damp forehead. His fellow elf was certainly looking quite intent upon mayhem and destruction, as slaughtering three lions had not slaked his thirst for vengeance nor his fury at Corinne's death, and he was methodically moving through the pack of beasts, giving assistance to the others whether they wished it or not.

With nothing much to do, Boromir and Dawn joined them, the latter leaning on her pikestaff and frowning at her sister for getting so grievously injured once more. The former merely watched as Haldir butchered another lion with Elessar's help. A lion swiped at Radagast; he danced back in a whirl of rusty brown robes and smacked it hard in the head; immediately, it turned to stone. Another rap with the staff, and the stone crumbled to sand and blew away in the wind.

" 'Spose you're right," Buffy conceded, voice very faint, and passed away. 

Legolas sighed, and settled back for a lengthy wait for her return to life. "Gimli, move. I cannot see with you in the way." 

***

The moment she opened her eyes, Buffy knew she wasn't alive again, at least not yet. Squinting, she thanked the Powers for her enhanced Slayer-vision that allowed her to see in spite of the total darkness that surrounded her. This place was not the same as the last time she'd been in this circumstance: that had been cloudy, remote, indistinct, surreal. This place was like Giles' wet-dream: rows upon endless torchlit rows of books, scrolls, and various interesting-looking gadgets.

Standing, she craned her head and looked around. There, about twenty rows away, was that a faint glow of light? Buffy jogged toward it and then turned into the aisle; at the very end was a familiar figure in a familiar stance: book open, nose pressed close, lips muttering to herself as she read.

"You've only been dead a half-hour," Buffy commented to Corinne as she arrived beside the other woman, hugging her warmly. "Sure didn't waste any time hitting the books, I see."

Corinne didn't say a word, just gave her a sad look and raised the book so Buffy could read the gold-embossed title on the spine: How to Return After Death.

"Ah," Buffy said in comprehension, and the enormity of the whole thing hit. For her, dying was no big deal. She knew she was going back, as surely as most people knew they would wake up the next morning. But for Corinne… there was no going back. This was it, unless they could unearth something useful in one of these books. "Can I help?"

Corinne's eyes lit on the other woman, an unreadable expression in them before she took another book and handed it to Buffy. 

Buffy looked at her book. The words on its front were completely unrecognizable to her, but as she watched they seemed to scramble and morph into actual English, which she hadn't seen since coming to Arda all those years ago, and which took her a moment to decipher. The book's title was Necromancy for Dummies and it didn't look very promising, what with its black snakeskin cover and poison-green lettering, but dutifully she cracked it open and began reading.

_What you'll need to raise the dead:_

_1. __the dead._

_2. __the assistance of a being of immense supernatural power._

_3. __yolks of two eggs._

_4. __pinch of salt._

With an exasperated sigh and exaggerated eyeroll, she wished (not for the first time) that Giles or Willow were there to do the researchy stuff. They'd always been way better at it than she. _Or Celeborn,"_ she thought. "_He was good at this sort of thing too."_ Sighing, she looked over at Corinne.  "Hey, how come you're alive here? And where is 'here', anyway?"

Corinne looked up slowly, and touched her fingertips to her forehead. Buffy frowned until she realized Corinne meant Seshat. "Seshat bought you back?" Corinne nodded, then pointed to her. "Oh, I died too. But I'm going back, I always do. Are you coming back with me?"

Corinne's eyes shimmered with grief, and she shrugged dejectedly. 

Buffy huffed out a breath in frustration. "Why aren't you talking?" she demanded.

This time, Corinne touched her neck, pushing aside the ankh-shaped collar that Buffy recognized as having belonged to Heka; Buffy peered at her in the low light and saw the bruises like dark amethysts ringing her throat like a gruesome necklace. "Oh," she said in comprehension.  "Is it permanent?"

The other woman shrugged sadly, and her eyes filled with tears. Opening her mouth, Corinne struggled to speak, but all that came out was a hoarse croak, so she made a motion with her fingers to indicate pointed ears. 

Buffy twigged immediately. "Haldir?" At Corinne's vigorous nod, she replied, "He's upset. Really, really upset. Been killing everything he can get his hands on."

Corinne smiled through her tears, then bared her teeth and pointed to her canines, and nodded again when Buffy guessed she meant Spike.

"We didn't kill him," Buffy told her. "Just roughed him up a bit." At Corinne's worried look, she laughed. "Trust me, for him, that's foreplay. Don't worry, he explained everything. We've mostly forgiven him." 

Corinne laughed then, and gave Buffy's arm a quick press of gratitude before motioning to the books. Sighing, Buffy plopped onto the floor and started to rifle through the pages once more in search of the right information to restore Corinne to life.

What seemed like years later, but was in actuality only about an hour, Corinne made another choking noise, and Buffy looked up swiftly to find her friend pointing excitedly. Leaning over, she read aloud from the page.

_To win back a Sâhu from the land of the dead, one must persuade the all-powerful and sometimes out-of-sorts Yinepu to release it. _

_This is not as easy as it sounds._

"That doesn't sound easy at all," Buffy grumbled, but read on.

_One needs to convince Him that the soul is more beneficial to Him in the land of the living, rather than His realm of the dead. However, He is very shrewd and quick to see the myriad ways in which a __Sâhu can serve him, and so is reluctant to give up any_ _Sâhu in case they might some day be of use to Him. Do not get your hopes up.___

_Failing this, one can always try to defeat Him in a contest, but this is not recommended as He is known for His extreme prowess in the arts of war and strategy. _

_Also, He cheats._

"This is ridiculous," Buffy complained. "Where's Seshat? Maybe She can shed some light on this stuff. My head's all fuzzy from thinking about it." Corinne quirked a brow at her, which she ignored. "Seshat!" Buffy called. "Hey, Seshat!"

Nothing happened. She opened her mouth to call again, but Corinne held up a hand to silence her. Buffy's enhanced hearing easily picked up the sound of sandal-shod feet strolling toward them, and she stood to greet the goddess when she finally turned down their aisle. 

"Greetings, Slayer," Seshat said in Her melodious voice. "You have summoned me?"

Buffy had the grace to blush a little; it was a bit rude, after all, to expect gods to jump when you commanded. "Yeah, hi," she replied, shifting from one foot to another in embarrassment. "Can you help us at all? Because this makes no sense to me, and Corinne can't talk, so we're kind of operating at a disadvantage here."

Seshat studied her a long moment, making her squirm even more, and then she heard Corinne's voice in her head. _"God, I hope Haldir's ok, he's a good fighter but if he's being reckless he could get hurt… will Buffy have to fight Yinepu? This is all so surreal, I feel like I'm in an Escher drawing… Hey, now she's looking at me weird. What? I didn't say a word! What?"_

"I have allowed the Slayer to hear your thoughts, Scholar, so think wisely," Seshat informed Corinne with a faint smile that grew wider when the woman sighed in relief.

_"Finally! Being mute was really starting to piss me off."_ Corinne exulted. _"So, what do we do now? How do we contact Yinepu so we can talk him into letting me go?"_

Seshat tilted her head to one side, making the shining curtain of her hair shift and glint in the ruddy torchlight. "Do you yet have my gift to you?"

_"The palm frond? Yes,"_ Corinne replied.

"And Hapi's gift as well?"

_"Yes, I've got the lotus petals,"_ she thought, sharing a bewildered look with Buffy.

"And Her-Wer has bestowed upon you the kiss of victory, has He not?" At Corinne's nod, She continued. "And you defeated Tayet by yourself, and the vampire gave you the collar of Heka, is this so?" Another nod. "Yinepu, my brother, she has sanction of three Netjeru, and has defeated two more. Do you not agree that this, then, is a _Sâhu_ worthy of mercy?"

In the time it took Buffy and Corinne to blink, another person had appeared beside Seshat. He was tall and whipcord-lean, with skin the colour of ink. Around His narrow hips He wore an intricately pleated kilt of blindingly white linen, and wristbands of lapis and carnelian beads adorned His slender wrists. Rising from a wide golden collar, His head was that of a jackal, with a pointed snout and long, quivering ears.

"Mercy is not my purview, my sister," He answered, and His voice was deep and pleasing. His eyes, a startlingly bright violet-blue, were piercing and speculative as they gazed at Corinne. "What you have described sounds very much like one I would prefer to keep with me."

_"Please,"_ Corinne ventured, _"I have to go back. Haldir… I have to be with Haldir."_

"He is a strong one," Yinepu said, brushing off her plea with a casual wave of his hand and making the beads of his bracelet tinkle and clatter. "And he has long to live... in a century, he will barely remember your name." Obviously, He meant this to be comforting, for He bared His teeth in a smile, and consequently was greatly puzzled when the woman burst into tears.

"Perhaps it would be best if you refrained from trying to cheer her, my brother," Seshat murmured while Buffy put an arm around Corinne's shoulders and glared at Him. "Your strengths lie elsewhere."

"True," Yinepu conceded, and tried to erase the sheepish expression from His face, as He knew it wasn't a good look for Him. "My apologies, Scholar," He said to Corinne, who sniffled and nodded.

_"Show how sorry you are by letting me go back,"_ she suggested hopefully, and His violet eyes took on a rather predatory gleam as He turned to look at Seshat.

"Ah, my sister, she is quick! How can you propose that I release her? For she would be a fine addition to my court." Folding His arms over His chest and making His wide golden collar shift, He surveyed Corinne in an almost proprietary way. "Nay, she shall be one of mine."

Buffy sighed. "Ok, fine. We tried to be nice about it. Now it's time for the pain." When both gods frowned in confusion, she reached for the book and jabbed an impatient finger at it. "Look, says right there we can fight you and you have to give in."

"It does not say that!" He protested, eyes widening with indignation.

"Does too!" she insisted.

"It **does** say that, my brother," Seshat told Him gently. "I would concede with grace, were I you."

"Oh, nice," Yinepu snapped, turning His head away in a sulky flounce. "Just beautiful. 'Tis a sad day when the actions of a god are dictated by the machinations of mortals and books."

"Quit whining," Buffy said, starting to get annoyed. "I'm the one who's been through hell the past few days; what have you done? Sat in the Underworld and passed judgment on dead people. Ooh, tough. So exhausting." She glared at Him. "Colour me completely unimpressed."

He glared back and soon they were locked in a staring contest. Seshat and Corinne exchanged a look of exasperation, and the goddess said, "I tire of this. Name your contest, Slayer, so we can have done with this nonsense."

"Nonsense!" Yinepu exclaimed. "You slight me, my sister."

She ignored Him, watching Buffy with a steadfast, liquid gaze. "Slayer? What is your choice?"

Buffy watched Yinepu, saw Him flex His arms and clench His fists. "First, I want Him to take His collar off. No special mojo helping Him win; He  has to beat me by His own merit."

"My collar? Why?" He asked, puzzled.

"Because," she replied impatiently, "it's your magic thingy that keeps you immortal and gives you special powers."

He glanced at Seshat, who covered a rather girlish giggle with Her hand. "Er, my talisman is not my collar, but my kilt," he informed Buffy. "Do you truly wish me to engage you without it?"

She frowned fiercely and ignored Corinne's silent convulsions of laughter. "Yeah," she said through gritted teeth. "I've seen naked guys before, you won't be any different."

_"Can the contest be jello wrestling?" _Corinne asked merrily._ "Cuz that would be worth the price of admission."_

Buffy shot a glare at her. "You want me to leave you here? Because I can do that. I can sit right down on my butt and just wait to come back to life, and you can spend the rest of your life with dog-boy here." 

Corinne bit her lip and sobered. _"Sorry,"_ she thought as Yinepu scowled and muttered, "I am a jackal, not a dog. Jackals are noble beasts, no mere curs…"

Seshat smacked Him lightly on the arm. "Behave yourself, my brother," She admonished. "It is unworthy of a god to mope."

"I shall not be the one moping when this debacle is finished," He said loftily. "For I shall defeat the Slayer, and have the Scholar for my court." Managing to smirk in spite of His snout, Yinepu unfastened His kilt and pulled it from around His hips to drop it to the floor. Corinne dared a glance and made an impressed _moue_ with her mouth at the sight, but Buffy kept her gaze on His face. "Name the contest," He said, tone infinitely amused. "Swords? Axes? Or perhaps chess is more to your liking; I would certainly prefer a bout of that noble game to a physical challenge." His tone dropped lower, became more sensual and caressing. "Unless you would rather a… physical challenge."

Buffy's face was a mixture of disbelief and distaste. "I'm married," she said flatly. "But yeah, I do prefer a physical challenge over chess." She turned to Seshat. "You got a table around here? And chairs?"

The goddess raised an elegantly arched brow. "A table?"

Corinne too was puzzled. "A table?" she demanded. "How the hell can a table help you defeat Him? What are you going to do, beat Him with it?"

Buffy bestowed a dazzling smile on Yinepu, a grin so smug He shifted uneasily in His gold-strapped sandals. "Arm-wrestling," she announced. "I totally rule at arm-wrestling."

Sâhu = the noble dead, souls of good people


	36. Chapter 35

Author's Note: This chapter dedicated to Caro, aka Technoelfie, for gifting us all with some exceptionally beautiful fanart of this story. You have my gratitude, my respect, my love, and my thanks, all in great profusion. 

Without, Part 35

There was nothingness for a long moment, an utter void of velvet blankness, until Buffy felt the familiar sense of being alive again, of having a body weighing her down and body parts to move and lungs to breath with. Opening her eyes, she saw above her the angle of Legolas' jaw and felt the tickle of his silken hair against her forehead.

"Hi, honey," she said to him, and he glanced down with a smile, eyes lighting with joy to see her alive once more.

"That was faster than usual," Legolas commented, hugging her briefly and pressing a kiss to her lips as Gimli beamed at her through his beard and Dawn murmured, "Welcome back." Spike just watched her, eyes wide and very, very relieved. Haldir's face was impassive, expressionless as a statue's, but Elessar smiled broadly at her and winked.

"Yeah, well, Corinne was impatient to get back," Buffy replied, grinning cheekily at Gondor's king.

All heads in the vicinity whipped around to stare at her at that. "What?" demanded Haldir, his voice hoarse. 

Buffy sat up and investigated her surroundings; the ground was littered with the corpses of Aker's alter-ego lions, but most of their company was fairly clean with the exception of the march-warden, who was liberally splattered with blood. She figured that they others had allowed him to work out his frustrations and demolish everything in sight. _Cheap therapy,_ she figured with a sigh.

"Yes," she confirmed, with a big smile. "I had to fight yet another god, but she's been allowed to return." Her head swiveled as she strained to look further. "So where is she? She should be here somewhere."

They all looked around, but as they stood in the middle of a large, vacant cavern with nothing but the howling wind, it was fairly evident right away that Corinne was nowhere in sight. Buffy bounced to her feet, energized as always after regenerating, and slapped her hands on her hips. "Yinepu!" she shouted. "You mangy mutt! What did you do with her?"

Yinepu appeared beside Buffy; quicker than the blink of an eye, Legolas had his an arrow nocked and aimed directly between the god's eyes. "You will step away from her," he informed Yinepu, who backed up, hands help up in mocking surrender as a rather unpleasant smile spread across His jackal's face.

"Slayer," he greeted her in a silky voice, then yelped in surprise when she reached out and yanked off his kilt. "Is that **entirely** necessary?" he asked sourly, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring.

"It is when I'm dealing with sneaky gods like you," she replied nastily. "And how weird is it that I know enough gods to make a statement like that?" She swung the kilt in her hand and determinedly refused to look below his waist. The others, however, suffered no such compunction and stared openly. "So, spill. Where is Corinne? You said she could come back with me."

"I said I would release her," Yinepu corrected, matching her nastiness. "You did not specify to where, so I chose a location myself." He leaned forward, ignoring the dig of Legolas' arrow into His forehead, and met her stare with his own narrowed one. "I shall not be dictated to, and certainly not by the likes of you." He straightened, and sniffed haughtily. "She has been sent back to your world."

Buffy gaped at him. "Let me get this straight," she began slowly, trying to control her temper. "You dumped a woman who's had the crap kicked out of her the past few days, and who's still mute from the injury that killed her, into the wilds of Middle-Earth without any means of protection?"

The others glowered at that, and Haldir shouldered Elessar aside to stand nose-to-snout with Yinepu. "You have done **what**?" he demanded from between gritted teeth, then locked his hand around the god's throat and hoisted Him off the ground to shake Him like a rag doll. Yinepu began to gasp for air, but Haldir didn't seem to notice. 

"You have returned her to life, only to abandon her in the wilderness so soon after the War, when orcs and Uruk-hai still roam the lands of Arda?" Yinepu was beginning to struggle in earnest now, kicking his legs and trying to pry the elf's hand from his throat, but Haldir was beyond notice; his gaze never wavered from Yinepu's face.

"Um, Hal, maybe you should let him go now," Buffy ventured after a moment. 

Instead, Haldir tightened his grip and with a brutal crunch, killed Yinepu before carelessly tossing His body away. "Do not call me that," he told Buffy calmly with a faint smile that rather scared her with its coldness. Then he turned to Dawn and Radagast, who stood watching him with expressions of apprehension on their own faces. "It is time to perform your parlour tricks once more, for we need to return." He squared his shoulders. "I must find Corinne." 

Dawn automatically extended her hand to the wizard, who reached into his dun robes for a needle after studying Haldir for a moment. He lightly grasped Dawn's hand and pricked her finger, squeezing gently to bring the blood. When the first tiny portal appeared, he thrust the end of his staff into it and pulled outward, widening and enlarging it so that even a Man of Boromir's size could fit through it. 

Then he eyed Spike. "You are sure you will accompany us?" he asked. "For I know not at which time of day we are returning, or if the sunlight there will harm you."

"I am," Spike declared. "Corinne's a decent bird, I'm going to help find her. 'S the least I can do, after bollocksing up keeping her safe." Then he glanced at Yinepu's corpse. "I'll go last, though. Think I might have myself one last meal before I go back on an animals-only diet."

Arwen grimaced at that, and volunteered quite eagerly to be the first. Elessar flatly refused, and it looked like they were heading for a full-fledged argument when Radagast sighed, grabbed a shoulder of each, and propelled them both through at the same time. "Newlyweds," he grumbled. "Ilúvatar preserve us from them all."

One by one, they entered the portal. Gimli blew out a greatly relieved breath as he leapt through, but Thranduil seemed almost sad to go. "Many fine adventures were had here," he commented, dancing nimbly out of the way of Radagast's eagerly pushing hand, and stepped through under his own steam, as it were, with one last fond glance backwards. 

Finally, it was just Radagast and Spike. The vampire left his dinner and staggered over to the portal. "Wow," he gasped. "Gonna miss that; it's good stuff." Radagast just rolled his eyes and shoved Spike through, himself following a second later.

They returned at precisely the same spot from which they'd left: the tiled mosaic floor of Radagast's garden. What was different, however, was the company: instead of merely a few score of soldiers and archers and Haldir's brother Orophin, not only did Rúmil and Tatharë run from the cottage after Orophin to welcome back the travelers, but—

"_Ada_?" whispered Arwen from her position on the ground, half-hidden under Elessar. She peered through the sheaf of wavy black hair that had tumbled forward to obscure her vision. "_Ada_, is it truly you?"

"It is," replied Elrond, coming forward and extending his hand to assist his daughter to her feet. "We arrived yester eve, fetched by Orophin when he became concerned over your prolonged absence."

"Prolonged absence?" Thranduil inquired, resting lazily back on his elbows and looking for all the world like there was no better place to be than lying in Radagast's untidy garden between the cabbages and beans. "How long have we been away, lord of Imladris?"

"Over three months," Elrond informed his Mirkwood counterpart, whose calm acceptance of that extraordinary statement was in direct counterpoint to the shocked exclamations of his companions. 

Only Haldir seemed unphased, or at least uncaring. "Arwen," he address the elleth, "Would you be so kind as to contact your granddam? I would have her try to locate Corinne, if she may."

But Arwen was still in shock at seeing her father, who she had never thought to encounter again after their tense parting following her wedding to Elessar, and stood trembling in his embrace. 

"It'll have to wait a while," Buffy told Haldir. To his credit, he said nothing, only clenched a muscle in his jaw and instead turned his attention to his brothers and Tatharë, who had flocked around him and now peppered him with questions about their quest. 

Buffy went to shoot a grin at her sister, but found to her dismay that Dawn was standing in the circle of Boromir's arms, head on his shoulder, weeping quietly. "What's wrong?" she asked, concerned.

"Mercas," Dawn replied with a sniffle. "We've already been away so long, and now time did a funky warp thing and we've been gone way longer than we thought, and, and, and we've missed almost four months of his life, and he'll be almost ten months old now, and what if we miss his first word, and his first step, and what if he doesn't remember us, Boromir?" She turned a tearful face to her husband.

"Babies are mostly witless," he replied matter-of-factly, smoothing her hair and pressing his cheek to the top of her head. "It would be surprising if he **did** remember us, I think." He tilted up her chin and dropped first quick, then more lingering kisses on her lips. "Do not fret, sweet, for we shall now return to him. If we are lucky, we shall have missed his fussing over growing teeth." Boromir looked positively delighted at the prospect of his brother spending sleepless nights tending to a screaming child. 

"Yeah, that's one milestone I'm not at all sorry to be missing," Dawn admitted, then brightened as a thought hit her. "It'll take us a month to get back, think he'll also be potty-trained by then?"

***

With a thud, Corinne landed on the ground. "Ow," she tried to say, shifting to her hip so she could rub her bruised butt, but her voice was still messed up and all that came out was a harsh croak. Looking around she saw that not only was she alone, but was in a totally unfamiliar place, and rested her forearms on bent knees and then dropped her forehead onto them. Was there no end to the confusion? She'd harboured a scant five minutes of bliss that she'd finally be reunited with Haldir, and now she was…

What was she? More importantly, **where** was she? Lifting her head, she studied her surroundings. It appeared she'd been plunked down squarely in the middle of a sort of courtyard, over which arched a tall dome supported on four tall, stout pillars. Behind her was a large altar-type platform, in the centre of which was a large, round impression, much like a socket. Seven broken stone prongs jutted upwards, clutching at nothing.

Venturing closer, Corinne saw that there was writing carved around the base of the platform. Brushing away what seemed like centuries of dust, she squinted at the words. Her reading of Common was somewhat better than her Sindarin, and she was able to discern that it read, "The stone of the fortress of stars."

_Interesting_, she thought. Of no use whatsoever to her, but interesting nonetheless. Turning from the platform, she saw that beyond the dome overhead was an entire city, of pearl-grey stone, and quite demolished. Statues leaned drunkenly, headless or armless, from their bases while walls and steps lay in cracked ruins. Gates fell open, admitting all who would enter, columns lay in pieces where they had crashed to the ground. 

_No help here, then,_ she realized with another sigh. Still, the place didn't have the taint of surrealism that Aker's realm had, and she figured she might very well be back in Middle-Earth. The question was, therefore, where in Middle-Earth was she? Were Buffy and the others back here as well, or only her? _Haldir's gonna bust a gasket at this,_ she thought with certainty, and heaved herself to her feet. Resigning herself to a lengthy walk, she picked a direction and started walking.

An hour later she found herself at the outskirts of the abandoned city, and through the gate hanging off its hinges, nearly entirely rusted away, a vast range of mountains stretched endlessly before her. With a sinking heart, she leaned against the crumbling wall that ringed the city and closed her eyes. What was she going to do now? It was madness to begin walking, with no provisions and certainly no way to defend herself should attack come. 

Corinne looked skyward; it was getting dark, and already the air was becoming chilled. Rubbing her arms through Spike's borrowed shirt, she began to amble back into the city, hoping to find some shelter that wasn't too hideously uncomfortable for the night, and perhaps some water as well. Food was probably out of the question, which was a shame, because her belly was already growling in protest at its emptiness.

She retraced her steps to the dome, and hearing the faint sound of rushing water, followed it to find that the city was split in two by a massive, fast-flowing river. She drank her fill, then stripped down and washed herself as best she could, feeling immensely better once she was clean, even if she had to put her dirty clothes back on afterwards. She found a corner that was mostly intact and curled up in it, exhausted.

What had gone wrong? Had it been something she or Buffy had done, or was it Yinepu that caused her to be sent here—wherever here was—all alone? Had Buffy been sent back to the others? Were they safe, or had they been defeated by Aker? The thought of Haldir, injured or even killed as he fought against the god, shattered the thin veneer of control she'd managed to that point and she broke down, crying until the sliver of a moon rose overhead and she fell asleep, her huddled figure bathed in its feeble light

Corinne was awakened the next morning by a shout, and pushed herself to a sitting position before rubbing the sleep from her eyes and peering into the bright morning light at the figures approaching her. 

"How fare you, milady?" one man asked her, kindness in his voice, while the other demanded why she was there in a somewhat more abrupt tone. Behind them on the riverbank, a small boat was tied with a length of rope to the ankle of a nearby fallen statue. 

"I—" she tried once more to speak, but it came out a garbled squawk so she just pointed to her throat and shook her head to indicate she couldn't talk. The first man seemed sympathetic but the second was unimpressed. 

"You cannot be allowed to remain here," he told her. "You shall be brought before the Steward." And he turned away, striding back to the boat and plunking himself down at its helm, glaring forcefully at her and the first man.

He sighed and attempted a smile. "I am Damrod," he introduced himself, "and that is Mablung." He helped Corinne to her feet and assisted her over the uneven ground to the boat. "We are Rangers of Ithilien."

Ithilien? Wasn't that where Dawn and Boromir and Buffy and Legolas lived? Excitedly, she grabbed his arm and began nodding her head frantically, wondering how to make him understand that she needed to get back to them. He seemed glad she was pleased to be there, but clueless as to what had her so thrilled. She quickly gave up, but was vastly relieved to be in safe hands, especially when Damrod handed her a fat packet of food and nearly full bottle of weak mead.

Mablung was a surly sort, speaking as little as possible, and seemed to resent the easy speech of Damrod, who kept up a running commentary the remainder of the day as they retraced their steps to their camp. It seemed that every week they made a patrol to the city of Osgiliath, in which Corinne had been unceremoniously dumped by Yinepu, and they had happened upon her there. 

"We shall bring you to the White City right away, milady," he told her, and she nodded happily. He gave her a clean tunic to wear, for which she joyfully rewarded him with a kiss to the cheek. His reaction was to blush furiously under his growth of stubble; Mablung's was to scowl even more fiercely and gripe even louder about the folly of rescuing foolish women sleeping in deserted cities.

And so they began their journey toward Minas Tirith, Corinne riding pillion behind Damrod since Mablung refused to allow her to ride their supply pony. After a few hours of silence, Damrod tried to make conversation as best he could with two companions who were not speaking, one by choice and the other by necessity. His eyes widened in alarm when he asked her if she'd tried leaving the city, and she motioned toward the east. 

"But, milady, that way lies Mordor!" he exclaimed. "There still be many wild things, fearsome things, in that foul land."

How could she respond to that? She shrugged and attempted a weak smile. He just sighed as if amazed anyone could possibly be that entirely stupid, and suggested she try to sleep, as the trip was long and dull. 

And so it was. For two days they rode, slept, and rode some more. Mid-morning on the second day, Damrod woke her for her first glimpse of the White City: obediently she looked, and gasped at the sight of it, rising out of the side of a mountain. Seven tiers it had, all of the purest white stone, and a lone tower rising above it all from the highest tier.

"We shall arrive before nightfall, if we make haste," he informed her, and she motioned that, by all means, they should make haste. He laughed and kicked his mount into an easy trot. 


	37. Chapter 36

Without, Part 36

Hours later, the gates of Minas Tirith were flung open to its returning sons and Corinne stared with wide eyes around her, trying to take mental notes as best she could. Still astride, they rode through the city to its topmost tier, where dwelled the king and queen when they were in residence and where the Steward and his wife currently ruled Gondor in the absence of Elessar and Arwen. 

Corinne's legs were wobbly after two long days perched precariously on a horse's rump, and she was grateful when strong hands steadied her as she stumbled. Turning to smile at her rescuer, her breath caught in her throat, for before her stood quite possibly the handsomest male creature she'd seen since Thranduil.

Except that there seemed to be two of him—or was she simply seeing double, after her hellish experiences of the past week? For there was not one, but two dark-haired elves with sparkling silver eyes standing on either side of her, hands outstretched as if to catch her in case she fell. For a crazy moment, she contemplated swooning just so they'd have to rescue her, but then dismissed it as stress-induced delirium. 

 "What are you doing here, Ranger?" one of them asked Damrod. "For your post is on the Anduin with your kinsmen."

The other nodded in agreement. "Bringing your leman for a visit to the White City is not recommended at this time, while the king is gone."

Corinne blinked in surprise, then frowned. "There's no need to be insulting," she tried to snap, though it came out more as an unintelligible croak. Frustrated by her inability to speak, she settled for slapping the elf sharply in the chest. 

In a flash, he had grabbed her wrist and spun her around, twisting her arm around her back and pushing her against the wall, his body pressing hard against her so she could barely breathe. "I recommend you not do that again, madam," he said into her ear, making her shiver in spite of the anger she could feel radiating from him. 

Her arm swiftly becoming numb and her shoulder aching fiercely, Corinne nodded. Slowly, he released her and turned her to face him. "Your name," he demanded.

"Corinne," she tried to say, but it was a mere squeak. Sighing, she pointed to her throat. His eyes scrutinized the marks and then he wrapped one hand around her neck much as Aker had only days ago. Panicking at the familiar, horrible sensation of being gripped there, she began to fight him but the other elf came forward and, pinning her arms to her sides, held her still.

"My thanks, Elrohir," the first elf murmured, then looked deeply into Corinne's eyes as a surge of warmth flowed from him into her. She calmed, and then began to nearly purr as the faint soreness in her entire body lessened. She could almost feel the bruises melting away, as well as the various aches from riding for days and sleeping on the ground. 

Finally he was done and stepped back, indicating to his twin that he should release her. When she was free, Corinne touched her throat and found there were no more sore spots. Relieved, she gifted him with a bright smile, but he merely stood there, stone-faced.

"Your name?" he repeated. 

_Why did she always get the pissy elves?_ she wondered. Aloud, she said, "Corinne," and was amazed when her voice, though hoarse, actually functioned.

"And from where do you hail, Corinne?" asked the other elf, the one called Elrohir, coming to stand beside his brother.

"Used to be New York," she replied, "but most recently, Caras Galadhon."

Elrohir quirked a dark brow. "Indeed? Then you shall have met our grandparents, Celeborn and Galadriel."

She brightened at that. "Celeborn's your grandfather? I **love** him! He's the one who taught me to speak Sindarin! And Galadriel's terrific, she's been a huge help to Haldir and me." Relieved to be able to speak once more, she found herself yapping freely. "You must be Arwen's brothers, then. I thought you looked familiar. Just as hot as Buffy said…" She trailed away when she saw their matching expressions of confusion. "Oh. Um, sorry. Should I go slower?"

"You should stop altogether," said the first elf, but Elrohir contradicted him.

"Elladan, she speaks of our sister and Dagnir." He turned to her, his intent silver eyes boring into her. "What do you know of them?"

They were both serious, deadly serious. "Why are you so worked up about them?" she asked slowly. "They've only been gone a few weeks."

"They have been gone for nearly four months," the one named Elladan informed her coldly. "We have not had word in many days. If you have information, it would be to your benefit to share it."

_Four months?_ Corinne goggled to herself, feeling a genuine swoon coming on, and groped for the wall behind her. Once more, their hands came out to steady her, and she leaned gratefully against them. "But we've only been in Aker's realm a week… less than a week… and it took two weeks to get to Rhosgobel from Caras Galadhon…no, it can't have been four months," she insisted to them. 

"And yet it has been," Elladan replied calmly. "Four months, almost to the day." He paused. "Come, you must tell your story to the Steward." He grasped her elbow and propelled her forward into the palace, his brother and Mablung and Damrod trailing behind. "Tell Faramir that one of his brother's party has arrived, and to meet us in the tapestry room." Elrohir nodded and peeled away from the group down a smaller corridor.

Once there, Elladan released her arm and suggested she take a seat. She did so, and surveyed her surroundings; the room was of medium size, with a vaulted ceiling that was painted black with a white willow tree and seven stars stretching to each corner of the room. The walls were covered with colourful tapestries featuring tales of yore, Corinne supposed, and though the immense hearth was empty this warm late-summer day, she could well imagine how pleasant the room would be in the midst of winter with a cozy fire.

While she was examining the chamber, Elladan was examining **her**, and as soon as she realized it, she blushed bright red and stared down at her lap. "I'm not Damrod's leman," she said quietly. "I—"

"Best to save your tale for the Steward," he interrupted, but his voice this time was gentler. "So you need to tell it but once."

The doors were flung open once more, and Elrohir entered with a man bearing such a striking resemblance to Boromir that he could only be that Man's brother. "Faramir, Steward of Gondor," the elf announced, then grinned. "And Mercas, prince of Ithilien whilst his parents are away." For Faramir came bearing a child in his arms, and grimaced as the boy got a great handful of hair, giving it a healthy tug. 

Corinne stood, but her attention was focused on the baby. "So you're Mercas," she murmured, reaching out a finger to stroke his light brown curls. "Your mom and dad have told me a lot about you."

But Faramir stepped back from her. "You will kindly explain your presence, milady, before touching my nephew," he told her with a frown. 

She understood, and sat down again. "You'll probably want to take a seat," she commented. "It's a long story."

An hour later 

"…And so Damrod and Mablung found me on the riverbank," Corinne continued, bouncing Mercas gently as she walked around the room. "I still couldn't talk, so they brought me to you, where I received quite the warm welcome from Tweedledee and Tweedledum, here." She grinned at the elves, who merely stared back impassively. _Honestly_, she thought grouchily, _it was impossible to make friends with them._

She'd encountered no such problem with the Steward; Faramir had warmed up to her right away, or perhaps it was because she'd succeeded in keeping Mercas quiet where he'd failed. In any case, he seemed more than content to sit back and listen while she labored to entertain Dawn's and Boromir's son. Not that she minded; the kid was adorable with his sandy-brown curls and huge blue eyes. 

Corinne bounced him on her hip once more. "So, that's my story."

"And it is an exciting one," Faramir conceded. "How much of it is truth?"

She frowned at him. "All of it," she sniffed, nose in the air as she turned away from him to the window, pointing out things of interest to Mercas. The melodious, bell-like sound of elven mirth filled the air then, and she turned back to find Elrohir laughing. 

"There can be no doubt of Haldir's influence upon you," he said, "for only the Guardian is capable of that much hauteur."

"Yeah," Corinne agreed with a fond smile. "He's a snooty thing, isn't he?" She sighed. "I miss him." Resting her cheek against Mercas' curly head, she gazed out the window, staring northward as if she could see Haldir's beloved Lothlórien even from Minas Tirith.

Faramir cleared his throat. "Damrod, Mablung, you concur with her tale?"

"From when we found her in Osgiliath, yes, milord," Damrod replied while Mablung jerked his head in a short nod. 

"Then I give you leave to return to your posts, with my thanks for your escort." Thus dismissed, the Rangers stood, bowed, and departed. "Have you two any doubts to her honesty?" he inquired of the elves.

"None," Elrohir replied, for he had been watching her closely for signs of deceit and had found none. Elladan nodded slowly, as if disappointed to have found her trustworthy.

"So, then," Faramir continued, eyeing her with speculation, "what shall we do with you?"

"You could send me up to Lothlórien," Corinne suggested hopefully. "That's probably where Haldir and the rest will go." She had a thought then, and frowned. "If they're back in Arda too, that is."

Elrohir lifted a brow. "Is there some doubt?"

She laughed, a harsh and humorless sound, and then winced when a tiny hand yanked on her hair. "With Aker, all there **is**, is doubt." She disengaged Mercas' hand and fished in her pocket for something he could play with, but all she had were four lotus petals and a somewhat wilted palm frond. Breaking off one of its leaves, she used it to tickle his wee nose, making him giggle. "The last I heard from Buffy is that Aker had yet to be defeated. I don't know if she's back with the others, or if she were sent somewhere by herself like I was. Anything could happen."

"In that case," Faramir said, "I will keep you here where 'tis safer, until some word arrives of the others' whereabouts." He grinned suddenly. "And you shall earn your keep; I see you get on well with the young prince. He is now your charge, as my lady wife is quite busy with our own child and her duties as chatelaine of the palace."

"Did Dawn not threaten you with emasculation if you foisted her son off on a stranger?" Elladan pointed out in a low voice, gazing at the Steward over his steepled fingers as he slouched languidly back in his chair.

"From her telling, she is almost family to Dagnir and her sister, and so hardly a stranger," Faramir replied reasonably. "And you shall be watching her besides, so I have no fears in placing Mercas in her care."

Elrohir began to laugh at his brother's outraged expression. "We were not sent here by our father to monitor your nephew's nanny," Elladan told him, voice quiet but infinitely menacing, "but to assist in the governance of this realm whilst our sister and her husband are away." 

Faramir only smiled as he stood, and turned to address Corinne, who was watching with bemusement. "I shall send in Éowyn forthwith," he told her. "Only stay here, and she shall fetch you to the nursery and your new chamber." Sketching a bow, he hastened from the room, leaving her with the identical elves and Mercas.

Soon a lovely blonde woman with a tiny infant in her arms entered the room, and the elves stood to greet her. "Milady Éowyn," Elladan said with a bow as Elrohir made a silly face at the baby, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue. 

"She is yet too young to respond to your brand of charm," Éowyn told the latter dryly, and he straightened, looking a little sheepish. 

"Ever have I liked children," he explained. "I hope our sister shall soon bless us with a niece or nephew of our own."

"Why not hook up with a foxy elleth and have your own?" Corinne couldn't help but ask, but he and his brother only looked at her oddly as they swept out the door. She turned to Éowyn. "Is that such a strange question to ask?"

Éowyn laughed and pushed a stray strand of golden hair behind her ear as she juggled her daughter with the other. "Both have sworn themselves to eradicating orcs from Middle-Earth, and that rather precludes them from taking mates and having families."

"Ah." Corinne was beginning to understand that some elves had this commitment thing where they forsook personal happiness for the sake of duty, and she could comprehend it all too well; hadn't she dedicated herself to learning for the sake of learning? If not for Aker's interference in her life forcing her to hook up with Haldir, she'd likely never have known was it was like to enjoy a passionate love.

At the thought of him, a bleak fear for his life and sharp longing for him swept over her, and to her dismay Corinne found herself crying once more. She pressed her cheek to Mercas' head, uncaring that her tears were soaking his curls, and let out a long sob of despair. The baby seemed to sense her need of his warmth and kept remarkably quiet, allowing her to cuddle him closely.

Corinne's tears ceased eventually, and when she dried her eyes she found that Éowyn had left her alone with Mercas. He began to squirm in her grasp and she carried him back to his chair, plunking him down and staring at him. Huge eyes stared back, and they had a moment of wordless communion until Corinne began to laugh. "What do we do now?" 

Mercas reached down into his chair and pulled out a rather battered doll, waving it hopefully at her. She took it and frowned thoughtfully. "A puppet show?" He clapped his chubby hands together and laughed, but she doubted he really understood what she'd said. Searching the room, she found a few more dolls in varying states of damage and lined them up on the table before her.

"What in the world am I going to tell you? I don't know any fairytales." She thought a moment. "Ok," she said at last, deciding. 

"Gilgamesh was two-thirds god and one-third human, and was the greatest king on earth and the strongest super-human that ever existed; however, he was young and oppressed his people harshly." She made the knight-puppet hop manfully across the tabletop. "The people called out to the sky-god, Anu, the chief god of the city, to help them. In response, Anu created a wild man, Enkidu, out in the harsh and wild forests surrounding Gilgamesh's lands." Corinne picked up the orc-looking doll and lurched it around with her other hand. "Enkidu had the strength of dozens of wild animals; he was to serve as the subhuman rival to the superhuman Gilgamesh."

Lifting her gaze from the dolls to Mercas, she told him, "Keep in mind the pervasive themes of heroism, polar opposites, divine intervention in mortal affairs, good versus evil. and overall cultural mores in the narrative as the story progresses." 

Mercas burbled and blew a spit bubble; she took that as assent and continued.

"A trapper's son, while checking on traps in the forest, discovered Enkidu running naked with the wild animals; he rushed to his father with the news. The father advised him to go into the city and take one of the temple harlots, Shamhat, with him to the forest. When she saw Enkidu, she was to offer herself sexually to the wild man. If he submitted to her, the trapper said, Enkidu would lose his strength and his wildness."

Corinne peered suspiciously at the child, as if she expected him to applaud the father's advice to his son. "And here we have the ancient concept of woman as drainer of man's potency and vitality." She snorted. "Typical misogynistic claptrap, but what can you expect from an Iron Age civilization?"

"What in the name of Eru is she telling him?" Faramir asked his wife from the entrance, where they stood listening at the cracked-open door.

"I have no idea," Éowyn replied, "but she is no longer crying, and you are not having to chase after him. Success all-round, would you not agree, my husband?"

"Ever are you canny, my lady of Rohan," he said admiringly before raising an eyebrow suggestively. "We **do** have a while before we ought to return," he mentioned casually. "Our own little one is asleep; shall we retire to our chamber?"

Éowyn laughed. "You are as subtle as an elvish arrow through the neck, Faramir," she told him, eyes sparkling. "Lead on."

***

Far to the north in Rhosgobel, a dozen people slumped in relief when Arwen relayed the message from her grandmother, who had it from her grandsons in Minas Tirith, that Corinne was safe. 

"Yinepu deposited her in Osgiliath?" Haldir demanded, his face like a thundercloud. His ire was understandable; it was but a year after the destruction of the One Ring and the ruined Fortress of Stars was perilously close to the still-untamed evil of Mordor. Deserted for many miles around, Osgiliath could be a frightening place.

"Some Rangers found her, and she is with Faramir and Éowyn now," Arwen soothed, and he settled back in his chair, still glowering but somewhat calmer. "When shall we be on our way?" she asked her husband.

"Are we certain that Aker is destroyed?" Elessar asked, meeting the gazes of first Buffy, then Radagast. "All the lions were killed, but does that mean He himself is dead?"

"I destroyed His talisman, the thing that made Him invincible," Radagast replied slowly. "One would think that, after its ruin, He—or whatever he changed into-- would be as vulnerable to the Guardian's wrath as any other mortal."

"And it's not like we can do anything about it," Buffy added. "We can't spend forever in Fun Land hunting Him down; we've got to collect Corinne and figure out what all this means for Arda and Aman. If there's going to be trouble, we'll need to be here to fight it."

Boromir heaved a great sigh. "I can only hope that will we not come to rue this decision."

"If we do, I hereby give you permission to tell us all, 'I told you so!' until we want to punch you," Dawn told him playfully.

"Another day to rest and pack, do you think, friend Gimli?" Legolas murmured, tapping his fingers on the table as he planned the logistics of their next journey.

The dwarf nodded. "At least." He gestured none-too-subtly toward Dawn and Arwen, whose shadowed eyes spoke of greater weariness than they were accustomed to. "Perhaps another week, even."

 "I saw that, Mr. Subtle." Dawn folded her arms across her chest and scowled at him. "Just because I'm tired doesn't mean I can't hit the road again."

"And I," Arwen added stubbornly. "'Tis merely the stress of the past days that has me looking less than I might." In truth, the purplish hollows under her eyes gave her a look of such fragile, ethereal loveliness that it almost hurt to look at her. "Now that we are home and there is naught to fear but the usual dangers of Arda, all shall be set to right once more."

"Yeah, what she said," Dawn agreed, and exchanged a firm nod with the elleth before both turned in tandem to glare down any opposition.

"So, that's settled then," Spike commented, fishing in his duster pockets for a cigarette and jamming one, a sadly bent specimen, in the corner of his mouth. "You lot would have a much easier time if you stopped fighting with your chippies over every little thing." He lit the fag and snapped the lighter shut with a flourish, squinting through the smoke he blew out the other side of his mouth. "I learned years ago not to argue with the Bit; it don't work, and only annoys her." He removed the cigarette and gestured toward Buffy. "Same goes for Big Sis."

"My thanks for your illuminating advice, vampire," said Elessar, his tone acerbic. "Should I have need of more, where shall you be found?"

Spike shifted on his chair and looked apprehensive. "Been meaning to ask about that, actually," he admitted. "I don't expect your bloke fancies having me roaming round his treehouse, yeah?" he asked Buffy.

"We do **not** live in a treehouse," she informed him, "but no, I think Legolas would rather eat ground glass than have you underfoot."

"You're so stupid," Dawn declared, staring at him in amazement. "Do you really think I'd let you live anywhere apart from me after I missed you so much this past year?"

Spike beamed happily at her around his fag. "And what does hubby have to say about it?" he asked lazily. "Wouldn't want to be the cause of any domestic strife." He judiciously ignored Buffy's blatant snort of skepticism.

Boromir's expression was carefully neutral, as was his tone when he said, "Our household is certainly large enough for you to join it. If Dawn wishes you to reside with us, then I wish it as well."

Spike nodded like the gracious gentleman he'd been raised to be. Then he ruined it when he replied, "Ta, mate," with a jaunty wave of his cigarette, strewing ash across the table. He seemed to think of something that displeased him greatly. "Oi," he said to no one in particular. "What am I going to do when I run out of fags?"


	38. Chapter 37

Author's Note: The poem included is from the Silmarillion and is the actual song Beren sang for Lúthien, so I'm certainly not claiming it as my own creation (if only). 

This is it, folks-- the end, and in honour of it, an extra-long chapter for ya. Thanks **so so so** much for your suggestions, comments, approval, and all-round support. Could never have cranked out 120+k words without you. 

Particular gratitude to houses for letting me yap at length at her, agonizing over plot points, dialogue, characterization, and all the other things that make all the difference in a story. You are the wind beneath my wings, punkin. 

Without, Part 37

"Oh, thank God," Dawn said in a low tone, the relief in her voice whole-hearted as she peered out from under the hand shielding her eyes from the sun. "Think we'll get there today?" The White City was the merest dot on the horizon, but it beaconed to them alluringly, for it had been a long journey from Rhosgobel in the north. 

"Unlikely," Boromir replied. This was his home, no matter that Elessar ruled it, and none knew better than he the terrain surrounding Minas Tirith and how long it would take to traverse it. "Not unless we wish to push the horses."

Elessar eyed the weary beasts. "Best that we not," he said with some regret. "'Twould be late when we arrived in any case, and there would be alarm at such." He stripped off his leather gloves and flexed his hands. "Never did I think I would tire of the road and long for a comfortable bed, but my days as a Ranger are long past, it would seem," he said with a small grin aimed at Buffy. "What think you, Dagnir? Have you become too soft as well for such travels?"

Buffy stretched her arms over her head and rotated her head to ease the kinks from her neck. "Every time we get to the end of one, yeah, I think I'll never get out of bed again." She slid a cheeky glance at her husband, who smiled knowingly at her. "For more reasons than one. But it never lasts, and before I know it, I'm itching to get out and do something again."

"I shall bathe," Arwen said suddenly, her voice dreamy as her eyes took on a faraway glaze at the idea. "Hot water, a froth of sweet-smelling soap… I shall not remove myself from the tub until I am a prune."

Elessar's eyes also glazed as well, but for a different reason. "Er, yes."

Buffy laughed outright at him. She was still smiling when she turned to the silent elf beside her. "I know you're looking forward to our arrival, too, Hal," she said quietly, watching his face intently. 

He was staring into the distance, gaze trained on Minas Tirith, and she wondered what his keen elven eyes permitted him to see. "Do not call me that," he said absently before turning to face her. "Yes," he agreed at last. "I am eager to be there."

"She's fine, you know," Buffy reassured him for the third time that day; it was a habit she'd gotten into whenever she saw his mood droop from 'normally reticent' to 'outright glum'. Never a hugely talkative elf, since returning from Aker's realm Haldir had been positively taciturn and it proved quite a chore to get him to say much of anything during their trip south. 

A ghost of a smile flitted about Haldir's lips. "I know. I no longer fear for her. It is merely that we did not part well… I declined her offer of love, and it has been long since I have seen her. Corinne may well have reconsidered her rash words, spoken in the heat of the moment."

Buffy's eyebrows lifted toward the sky. "Are you kidding? Haldir, Corinne's the least rash person I've ever met. She doesn't say things in the heat of a moment, and you know it. Especially not about love." When he remained silent, she continued. "Think about it. There was nothing in the cartouche's bond that stipulated you had to love each other, only be horny. She's loved you for ages, and I doubt she's going to just forget about that now that you've been apart for a month."

Still he did not speak. Buffy slid a sly glance his way. "Of course, Elrond's sons have been keeping her company… maybe she's found a replacement or two for you. She was **very** interested when I told her of the hotness that is Elrohir and Elladan."

**That** got a reaction out of him. "Those _peredhil_ would not dare—" he choked out, glaring hotly until he saw she was teasing him. "Thranduilion," he said to Legolas, "your wife is in dire need of discipline. It is not wise to goad a march-warden."

"I agree," Legolas said, eyes glinting in the late afternoon sunlight as he recalled certain thoughts about the twins his wife had admitted to him one night. "It is best not to mention the sons of Elrond in my hearing. Ever."

Arwen frowned at this. "What can my brothers have done to earn such hostility?" she asked mildly. "They are ever courteous, and pleasing to the eye as well as valorous in battle. Indeed, their skills with music and poetry are near to unequalled in all of Rivendell, and that place is renowned for its excellence in the arts."

"Poetry?" At this, Spike perked up. "Your brothers are poets?"

"All elves are poets," Arwen explained patiently, and smiled at his enthusiasm. "Would you care to hear a song written by Beren for Lúthien? They were my great-grandparents." At his nod, she began, her sweet voice floating on the air and caressing their ears.

_Farewell sweet earth and northern sky,_

_for ever blest, since here did lie_

_and here with lissom limbs did run_

_beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun,_

_L__ú__thien Tin__ú__viel_

_more fair than mortal tongue can tell._

_Though all to ruin fell the world_

_and were dissolved and backward hurled_

_unmade into the old abyss,_

_yet were its making good for this—_

_the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea—_

_that L__ú__thien for a time should be._

Spike looked enchanted, and to his credit, more at the song's lovely lyrics than by Arwen's ethereal voice. "Do you know any more?" he asked, voice atremble, and with a laugh, she launched into another tune. 

Buffy and Dawn exchanged a highly amused glance, but Haldir allowed his attention to narrow, and the voices of the others, even that of the Evenstar, to fade away. In spite of Dagnir's confidence in Corinne, he had great and myriad doubts. Yes, he loved her—freely, completely, and in no way because of that thrice-damned cartouche. He loved her intelligence, her curiosity, her wit. He loved her passion and devotion for him, loved her talent for learning and languages, her clumsy attempts at kindness and the amazing way she'd rallied from her fears to become a courageous and strong woman.

But therein lay the problem: she was a woman, a child of Man, and mortal. In matters of courage, did he have enough to take her to wife, knowing they would have but decades together? Knowing that her lifetime was but a blink of an eye to an elf, and that sooner than was decent she would be gone from him?

What would happen to him after her death, Haldir wondered. There were two options, of course; the first was that he would go the way of most elves after the other half of their heart was no more, and perish. But this was an unacceptable end for Haldir of Lórien; he was a march-warden, and the Golden Wood's Guardian. The forest was as a living thing, and his destiny was that of its protector, its sword and its armour. How, then, could he follow Corinne to her cold grave? 

He could not, and thus there was but a single choice for him: to live on after she had died, to live on with the aching void in his chest where his heart used to live, knowing she was gone and that not even after the Valar granted him his own demise would they be together, for Men were not held in the halls of Mandos, as were elves. Their souls were released, let to roam freely as their gift from Ilúvatar, and so even when he was united with his kin in the noble palace of the dead, Corinne would be gone from him forever.

All they had was this short life of hers, this moment in time. Would she still want to share it with him? After his attempt to rape her in Rhosgobel—no matter that he had not been in control of himself at the time—after his rejection of her love, after violence and violation and manipulation and pain, so much pain… could she bear to spend her life looking at his face? 

They made camp quietly, efficiently, and Haldir volunteered for first watch, fully intending not to wake Legolas for the second, but to remain throughout the night with his thoughts. Peace was not to be his, however, for that elf rose, silent as a wraith, from his place beside Buffy to join him beside the small fire.

"She will not refuse you, _meldiramin_," Legolas said quietly after a moment. "Never has she been able to hide her feelings. Even after the cartouche was broken, her love for you shone like a Silmaril."

Haldir's visage was bleak in the firelight. "I have lived long, Thranduilion," he said. "I have lived long, and loved but once. How shall I bear her death? Being parted from her this month has made me ache as if from a thousand wounds. Losing her for always will surely kill me, do you not think so?"

Legolas studied the elf before him. "No," he said at last. "For you will have your children to comfort you, and you will share stories of their mother, and she shall live ever in your heart." He grinned then. "You must not be cheerless any longer, for the vampire starts to call you Broody Elf." He shot a narrow glance over at where Spike lay reclining against the trunk of a tree, asleep but protectively close to Dawn and Boromir. "I look for any way to disappoint that one," he said darkly. "Glad am I that he will live in Minas Ithil; perhaps I can convince Dagnir to move farther north—"

Haldir surprised him by laughing. "Any further north, Legolas, and you shall be making your home in the Wetwang, and Dagnir was not at all fond of the life that teemed in that sodden land, as I recall." He tilted his head to the side, looking at Legolas consideringly. "Come, cease your tirade, for jealousy suits you ill."

Legolas slanted him a look. "Healing words from one who suffers the same disease," he commented dryly.

Haldir only quirked a silver-gilt brow. "Jealous? I? You are mistaken, fair prince."

"Am not," Legolas shot back. "I both heard and saw your reaction to Dagnir's mention of the sons of Elrond—"

"My displeasure was for their daring, not for Corinne," Haldir interrupted hotly. "Never have I doubted her constancy to me, nor her love."

Legolas did not answer right away, but when he did, it was with a broad smile on his face. "There," he said happily. "You have said it yourself: there is naught over which to worry, for you hold her heart, as she holds yours."

Haldir glared. "You are an orc, Legolas," he growled. "A tricky Mirkwood orc, and far too smart. You shall pay for that trickery."

But Legolas only grinned and sauntered back to his pallet beside his wife. "In due time, I am sure, Guardian," he said. "In due time."

***

Spurred by their eagerness, they made excellent time the next day, and the sun had scarcely reached its zenith in the sky when the mighty iron gates of Minas Tirith were flung open for the king and queen of Gondor, prince and princess of Ithilien, and their companions. 

"Yes, yes, yes," Gimli grumbled at the swarm of dwarves that flocked to him as soon as he entered on horseback, all shouting questions at him. "Blast you all, I have but just returned! Hold your tongues until I have recovered from my journey!"

"And how long shall that be, friend Gimli?" Legolas asked out of the corner of his mouth. 

"At least a fortnight," Gimli replied likewise. "Hush, they have the ears of a bat, and I would have peace."

The people of the White City were thrilled to see their monarchs; Arwen, who had never been convinced that she, an elleth, had been fully accepted by the Men and Women of Gondor, wept openly to see how gladly they waved at her and called her name. Elessar just looked pleased that his wife was happy. 

"He's just a big schmoopie bear," Buffy commented with a fond smile at her friend as they rode up the tiers of the city to its summit. Elessar turned around on his mount to stare at her, a look of such consternation on his unshaven face that she burst out laughing. 

Haldir exchanged a look of great sympathy with the king. "Ever is she calling me distasteful things as well, Elessar," he said sadly. "'Twill be a fine day when I can return to my forest and not hear her voice shrilling that ludicrous moniker at me."

Buffy ignored them and leapt easily from her horse to land in the dusty courtyard outside the stables. "Hey, there's Faramir," she said when the Steward turned the corner. 

Boromir turned and rested his eyes on the Man. "Brother," he said with relief, embracing Faramir fiercely. "Glad I am to see you once more; now I know that our journey is truly at an end."

"Has it been a grueling trip, then?" Faramir asked, gasping a little at the force of his brother's arm around his shoulders. 

"In the extreme," Boromir said in heartfelt tones and with the tiniest sideways glance at Haldir, who pretended not to notice. "Come!" he said heartily. "Where is my son? I would remind him that he does indeed have a father."

"How's Éowyn?" asked Dawn as he helped her down from her horse. "She was due about six weeks ago, did everything go okay?"

"It did indeed," Faramir confirmed. "Her travail was long, but Éowyn is not one to be defeated by trifles. We have a daughter, and have named her Léofa. She has much the look of her mother, to my great relief; sad it would be for a girl to suffer this grim visage," he joked, his joy at new fatherhood clear. 

"So where is she?" Dawn inquired, her stride somewhat compromised after hours in the saddle as she and the rest followed Elessar and Arwen into the palace. "And where's Mercas?" She shot a teasing glance at Spike. "His Uncle William is eager to meet him."

"She and Corinne are with the children in the garden," Faramir answered, oblivious to how Haldir tensed at the mention of Corinne's name as he led them there.

Reached through a high stone arch, the garden was a spacious area with narrow brick paths winding through neatly tended patches of herbs and flowers. Every tree boasted a bench beneath it, and ensconced in one of them sat Éowyn with one plump breast exposed by the unlaced front of her gown, her daughter's face pressed eagerly to her as the infant fed with much enthusiasm and noise.

Not far from her walked Corinne in a slow circle around one of the herb patches. In one hand she held a book from which she read with her usual absorption, and the other clasped a baby on her hip, bouncing him gently. The long green gown she wore skimmed lovingly over her curves, enhancing them in a way her modern clothing had never been able to manage, and her hair had grown significantly in the past month. It was wound up in a messy bun with many tendrils straggling free, and it was one of these tendrils that Mercas grabbed in his hand and yanked on, the better to get it into his mouth.

"Hey, no hair-pulling, you little booger," Corinne told him absently, her glasses slipping down her nose. Trying to push them back up with her wrist so she didn't have to release the book, she looked past Mercas' head to see the group standing in the entrance to the garden, watching her. Dawn and Boromir came forward to claim their son, Spike trailing behind with a hopeful look on his face, but Mercas shied away and buried his face against Corinne's shoulder.

"He's shy with… um… strangers right now," she explained awkwardly, achingly aware of Haldir still standing under the arch, his gaze locked on her. Tears came immediately to Dawn's eyes, and Boromir slipped an arm around her waist. "Hey, Mercas," Corinne prompted him. "Here's your Mom and Dad, they're here to play with you. I bet Daddy's great with blocks. You can build the biggest castle ever."

Mercas cautiously peeked at them; Dawn bit her lip. Then he looked up at Corinne, as if for approval. She nodded reassuringly. "Da," he said then, and now it was Boromir who bit his lip to keep from crying. "Da."

"Yes," Boromir said, his voice hoarse. "I am your Da." He reached out tentatively, and this time Mercas didn't flinch back, allowing the newcomer to lift him into his embrace. 

Immediately, Dawn pressed close, her hand coming to stroke the tiny back as she began to murmur to him, "I'm so sorry we left you, honey. We won't go again, I promise, Mercas. Never again."

They left then, Boromir thanking Corinne for her care of their son, wanting to have some private time as a family. Spike stood there somewhat forlornly even after Corinne greeted him, and Buffy took pity on him. "Come on, we're going to go have lunch," she said, digging an elbow into Legolas' side when he opened his mouth to protest. 

He snapped his mouth shut once more and said nothing, though Gimli was not troubled to start laughing, and the four of them wandered away to find some food. Elessar and Arwen ambled off with Faramir and Éowyn, the elleth exclaiming over the smallness of Léofa and developing a glint in her eye that spoke of a new addition to the royalty of Gondor in the next year, and then Corinne and Haldir were alone in the garden.

He looked tired, she thought, tired and sad, as if he expected bad news and was resigned to it. "So," she said, coming toward him, "Look what the Slayer dragged in." The twins had relayed the message from Arwen that all members of their party were accounted for, so she hadn't been much assailed with worry for him, but knowing he was safe and **knowing** he was safe were two different things. "Glad to see you're still in one piece."

"And you," he replied, and his voice was as silken and thrilling as she remembered, as she heard in her dreams at night when the loneliness threatened to strangle her. "You are well?"

"I'm fine," she said. "I mean, I'm not 'running around, wind in my hair, the hills are alive with the sound of music' fine, but..." She dropped her gaze to the tips of his boots. "Is Aker dead?" she asked, desperate to keep talking, suspecting that to let silence fall would be to invite disaster.

"We are not sure," Haldir answered. "He split into many lions, and we slew them all, but I cannot know if that means He is gone forever." He paused. "I killed Yinepu," he added after a moment. 

Corinne frowned. "Why?"

"Because he sent you to Osgiliath, instead of somewhere safe," Haldir said quietly. He thought she looked very fine indeed, and marveled at the grace with which she wore the Mannish gown. A definite improvement over those bizarre garments she had packed from her world; though he had brought them from Rhosgobel, he sincerely hoped she would not wear them again. Especially those hideous shoes.

"Oh," she replied, mouth a soft O of surprise. "You killed a god for me?"

"I would do anything for you, _doll-nîn_," he told her swiftly, eyes blazing silver as he gazed avidly at her. The depth of emotion in them humbled her, striking her dumb for a moment.

"Oh," Corinne repeated numbly after a while, then reached up to smooth back a strand of his cornsilk hair. Quick as lightning, his hand grasped her wrist before she could touch him, and she wondered with a pang if he were still determined to deny his feelings. Then he turned his head and pressed his lips to her palm, his eyes closing in an expression of absolute relief.

"How I have longed for you," Haldir murmured. "With each step closer to this place, my heart felt lighter, knowing it was nearer to its home." He opened his eyes and released her hand; of its own accord it cupped his cheek, caressing the taut, smooth skin. "You know this, do you not, Corinne?"

"That I am the home of your heart?" she asked, staring up at him in part-amazement, part-adoration. "Yes. Just like you're the home of mine, and have been almost since the beginning." She slid her hand down his throat to his chest, and he covered it with his own, pressing it hard just over that fiercely-beating organ. 

Haldir slipped his free hand around the back of her neck and drew her close for his kiss; she was utterly yielding to him, opening herself to him as his mouth covered hers, just rubbing lightly, a satiny caress that was almost chaste. When he pulled back, he smiled with a touch of his old arrogance to find her standing on tiptoes, eyes still closed and mouth open. 

Then her eyes popped open and she adjusted the fit of her glasses on her nose as she grinned at him. "I have a surprise for you. Um, several, actually."

Haldir was not sure he liked the sound of that. "Surprises?"

She nodded and walked over to a rather steep pile of books stacked on one of the benches. "When I was dead," she began conversationally, "Seshat explained a few things to me." She paused, retrieving something from between the pages of one, and he waited for her to continue. "What were the names of the children we had in the dream Heka forced on you?"

Blinking, Haldir had to think a moment. "Ataralassë," he said at last. "It means 'father's joy'." Then he watched in bemusement as she withdrew and placed in his hand a slightly shriveled but still creamy-pink flower petal. "Earo, the sea." Another petal. "Cualla… little dove…" A third petal. "Woman, what are you doing?"

She smiled mysteriously at him. "Just tell me the last one."

He blew out an exasperated breath. "Failon."

"And its meaning?"

"Generous and just." He stared down at the four petals in his hand. "What are these for?"

She smiled blindingly up at him. "Hapi gave them to me, to us. A gift, a promise."

He was beginning to see what she was saying. "Do you mean…" His voice died to a whisper. "Do you mean that we truly shall have those children, of whom I dreamed? All of them?"

Corinne nodded. "It's been guaranteed." 

Haldir carefully placed the petals in her hand and turned away, shoulders square and chin high. Another woman would have thought he was greatly displeased by this news, but another woman would not have known him half so well as Corinne, and she placed the petals back in their silk wrapper before going to him, sliding her arms around his waist from behind and resting her forehead between his shoulder blades.

"There's more," she said.

"More?" He gave a short laugh, his voice tight, and she knew he was having trouble containing himself. It was one of the things she loved about him, his determination to present a calm mask to the world, but the rapid beat of his heart told her he was not as unaffected as he pretended to be. 

"In ancient Kemet, various symbols of Seshat's represented different periods of time," she said, allowing her hands to wander a little over his chest, feeling the hard planes of muscle under his tunic. _Mmmmm_. "The palm frond represented years, with each stalk being a century." One hand slid lower, to his flat belly, while the other moved higher to stroke the fine-suede of his throat. "Seshat gave me a palm frond, Haldir, and it had twenty-seven stalks on it."

He whipped around to face her. "What are you saying?" he demanded, his face suddenly, alarmingly ashen. "What are you saying?"

She was taken aback by his reaction. "I'm saying that I'm going to be able to live at least another two thousand, seven hundred years," Then she yelped in shock when his arms locked around her like steel bands, hauling her off her feet to clasp her tightly against him. "Breathing," she gasped. "Becoming an issue."

"Elbereth, Elbereth," Haldir whispered over and over, easing his embrace enough for her to suck in some air. "Thank you, thank you."

Corinne wound her arms around his neck and held on tightly, inhaling the divine scent of his hair and reveling in the feel of his body pressed against hers, and realized how starved for contact with him she'd been. "So, you're happy about this, then?"

In reply, Haldir threaded his hand in her hair, dispersing her hairpins and completely destroying her haphazard bun, and held her still so he could kiss her with spectacular thoroughness. "Yes," he said when he was done ravishing her mouth. "Yes, I am happy about this."

"Glad to hear it," she said breathlessly. "What do you say about getting started on Ataralassë?"

Haldir smiled down at her, looking positively angelic, but his eyes gleamed devilishly. "And this time, nothing is forbidden," he reminded her as she took his hand and led him at a rapid pace toward her chamber. "There is no dire peril to keep us from slaking our needs in all the ways we desire." Her response was only a moan and increased speed. At one point Faramir stepped out of a room, mouth open as if to speak, but she just rushed past him, Haldir trailing behind her and grinning stupidly at the Man as he followed in her wake. 

Then they were in her room, and Haldir barely managed to kick the door shut because she was climbing his tall body like a kitten, clawing and biting her way up.

Éowyn joined her husband where he stood in the corridor, watching the show. "I am glad they have resolved their differences," he commented to her. There was a loud thud, as if a heavy piece of furniture had just been jolted across the floor, and a smile spread slowly across her face. 

"I expect they shall be resolving them repeatedly for the remainder of the day," Éowyn said slyly, and handed Léofa over to Faramir. "Here, tend to her while I arrange for a meal to be brought to them in a few hours." She walked off, leaving Faramir holding his daughter.

"You must not ever become as saucy as your mother," he told the child, who stared guilelessly up at her father with big blue-grey eyes. "I can barely keep up with her, and if you take the same path, I shall be sadly outnumbered."

Moans began to emanate from the room down the hall, and the distinct sound of a jouncing bed, too. Then another set of suspicious noises started to come from the direction of the royal chambers. "You are too young to hear this, young Léofa," Faramir told her, frowning.

A third room joined in the amorous chorus, that which Faramir was sure his wife had assigned to Dagnir and Legolas, and if he were not mistaken, was that rather loud groan not coming from the chamber that his brother and sister-in-law always used when in Minas Tirith, now that Mercas had been given to his namesake for tending?

"In fact, ***I*** am too young to hear this," Faramir declared with a wince at one particularly enthusiastic yelp of satisfaction, but couldn't repress a grin as he withdrew into his own chamber, kicking the doors shut and wondering, as he watched Léofa's eyes shut for her afternoon nap, whether Éowyn would return before their daughter roused for her next feeding…

~*~ THE END ~*~

_peredhil_ = half-elves

_doll-nîn_ = my dusky one


End file.
